The Sleep of Reason
by ColonelDespard
Summary: Enjolras is stalked in the darkness, and light struggles to return to light. Warnings for some sexual themes, violence and language
1. Chapter 1

**The Sleep of Reason**

**Author note: Maggot –noun 1. a soft-bodied, legless larva of certain flies. 2. **_**Archaic**_**. An odd fancy; whim.**

This story is a "maggot" in the second sense. Which is a nice way of saying it's a crack!fic, overrun with the ubiquitous vampires that haunt every fandom. _Les Amis_ belong of course to Victor Hugo. Most of the cast of vampires, including Madame Vep, are inspired in name at least by the silent film serial _Les Vampires_ (1915), with the major exception of Graf Ambrus Orssich. This story is drawn from the spectrum of vampire lore, from folktales to horror cinema, but not from any specific recent productions. I owe vast thanks to **TheHighestPie** for doing the beta work on this – among many other things, including toning down the purple prose, she has saved me from committing the gaffe of consistently misspelling a major character's name. The blunders here are of course my own. My Parisian geography, gleaned from maps that confuse me and hazy memories of good weekends spent there, will probably be a source of amusement if anyone reads this.

Renfield was "a sane man, fighting for his soul." In this story, so is Enjolras.

**Chapter 1**

_**Those who felt this sensation of awe, could not explain whence it arose: some attributed it to the dead grey eye, which, fixing upon the object's face, did not seem to penetrate, and at one glance to pierce through to the inward workings of the heart; but fell upon the cheek with a leaden ray that weighed upon the skin it could not pass.**_

_- The Vampyre, _John Polidori, 1819

"What arguments did you use in the end to get Enjolras to attend?" Joly whispered to Courfeyrac, sitting beside him in the Gods of the Comédie-Française. Courfeyrac was somewhat elevated on the champagne he had drunk before the performance and the surreptitious sips of brandy he was taking from a hip flask. He was settled back into his seat, arms crossed, cravat cheerfully askew from his tugging it loose, grinning.

"He put up a fight," Courfeyrac explained, not bothering to lower his voice. "Offered a compomise, wanted to join us for a late meal, but I told him it was the revival of _Bertrand et Suzette; ou Le Mariage de raison _or nothing."

It had been a near run thing. With exuberant cries of "let's bury Molière once again!" Bahorel, Courfeyrac and Bossuet had bullied and cajoled the rest of the Amis to join them for a night at the Comédie-Française. As always, they cherished hopes for a restaging of the brawl that had erupted over a year before on the night _Hernani_ premiered. They had joined the vanguard shouting down those Classicists who had dared to attend, and Courfeyrac still spoke of the fray with shining eyes. No such scenes seemed likely to occur tonight, beyond the usual catcalling and hooting, but the three lived in hope. The fare was old by several seasons, but the comedy of manners suited their mood, and the idea of Enjolras watching a marital farce had enhanced their enjoyment.

Enjolras had hoped to escape this performance, arguing that while he did not begrudge anyone their entertainment, he failed to see the didactic value of the theatre. He finally succumbed, somewhat wearily, to Courfeyrac's elaborate, detailed and completely transparent argument that, as Robespierre had theorised on the use of theatre to mould the people's sense of virtue, Enjolras should develop the idea, learning the mechanisms of performance by observation. And what was more, his presence would contribute to the Amis _esprit de corps_.

They gleefully bore him away with them, as Courfeyrac happily noted, like a captured Sabine maiden.

"And there he sits – looking like he's wearing a Greek mask," Bahorel said, leaning in from the row behind. "Tragedy, I think."

Courfeyrac regarded his friend, sitting at the end of the row with Combeferre between them. Enjolras was sitting straight-backed in his seat, looking with strict attention at the stage, to all appearances intent on the action. Courfeyrac knew this could be deceptive. Enjolras might seem to be gazing into the middle distance with his eyes unfocused but still hearing every word around him, or his level gaze might hide thoughts far distant.

"I think it's a stoic mask," Courfeyrac said thoughtfully. "Was there a stoic mask? What say you, Prouvaire?"

Combeferre turned to them with the indulgent shake of the head, a customary rebuke when Courfeyrac became chatty at a performance, just as customarily ignored.

"Well, the wearing of masks originated with the cult of Dionysus – if Grantaire was here he might be able to shed some light on the subject," Prouvaire said with the air of giving the question all due consideration.

Combeferre's lips were now slightly pursed and the look a little less indulgent. Courfeyrac took another sip of his flask and offered it to his friends, sniggering, but the impact of his next rejoinder was lost in a roar of laughter from the group of printers' clerks seated two rows behind, who were threatening to outdo the students in the matter of high spirits. Courfeyrac appreciated the challenge and, rising to his feet, hurled a few rousing remarks at the stage.

*********

Enjolras tried to concentrate on the stage action, but it was impossibly absurd. Although he told himself that this was a simple pleasure for most people, he could not divest himself of the feeling that there was something inherently dishonest in the dissembling of actors. Although he knew and loved his Aeschylus and revered his Sophocles, he could not be drawn into the passionate arguments within the ABC on the merits of Classicism in opposition to those of the romantic realism touted by Hugo and Scribe.

He also felt an instinctive distaste for the frivolity of the opulent, gilt surroundings, even if they were sitting up in the Gods with the poor of purse rather than in the grand circle boxes with the glittering social creatures.

More than that, though, something else was contributing to the discomfort he felt, though he could not tell yet whether the reaction was physical or some mental mechanism. It was during the performance of the second act he had become aware of a strange pricking of his skin, as if an icy breeze had played over it, though he did not feel cold.

In the neat compartmentalisation of his mind, he noted the action and dialogue of the stage – if asked later, his curious memory would be able to recall most of the words. His conscious mind, meanwhile, sought a reason for his unease. He focused, letting the words of his friends fade, letting his eyes glance over the crowd. Most were watching the play, though several were more interested in observing the rest of the audience. Under the dimmed theatre lamps could be see the occasional gleam of light, flicking off silks, jewellery and glossy hair. Coughs and discreet murmurs arose from the circle.

He knew the source of his disquiet as soon as his gaze lighted on a private box, one of those taken for the season by the wealthy. He had an impression of a fashionably dressed man who sported foppishly long hair falling in wings alongside his face and a russet dress coat coupled with a loud waistcoat. The eyes were concealed by opera glasses, but he realised with a beat of dismay that he had no doubt that the opera glasses concealed eyes that were fixed intensely on himself.

************

The glasses were an affectation. Graf Ambrus Orssich's eyes were far keener than those of any man in the room, and saw much more than the physical features of the pale young man in the upper balcony with what Orssich took to be a group of fellow students. Although the boy's face was still and impassive, the only movement his eyes flicking over the crowd, Orssich knew precisely the moment when the young man had sighted him. He could imagine, as if he could sense them, the breath as it caught in the student's throat, knew that the heart had skipped, felt the momentary clenching of his hands. Orssich flicked the tip of his tongue over his white teeth. Exquisite. The object of his attention was dressed in severe black, simple cravat, no pin – and was, so Orssich thought, as much in costume as Orrsich himself with his nipped-in waist and elabouritely embroidered waistcoat, contrasting cravat and series of pins.

Across the distance between them, he had an acute awareness of the blue eyes, the fine molding of his features, the ruddy colouring of his lips. Orssich could anticipate the finely honed musculature, concealed beneath the frock coat. A wave of delicious anticipation washed through him, a lust almost sexual.

He could see the red droplets on that neck, the shock of struggle, the relaxation of all that taut energy as the young man surrendered.

"You've seen him too, then," said an amused voice next to him.

"I can feel him in this crowd. He calls to me." Orssich's said, voice pitched low and harsh.

"Pity," she whispered in his ear. "I'd have enjoyed plumbing to the bottom of that gaze. But if you want him, he's yours."

Orssich spared a look at Madame Vep, glittering darkly in her finery, and gave her a respectful and grateful nod of the head.

************

Combeferre murmered something in his ear, and Enjolras released the breath he had been holding. He realised to his annoyance that he had missed whatever it was that his friend had been saying, and his quirk of recall could not provide the words.

"I'm sorry," he murmered. "I did not catch that."

Combeferre smiled. "That answers my question – I was asking if you did not think Ravel was being rather dull tonight. I assume you're running through your response to the that Thiers piece in _Le National_."

Unaccountably confused, Enjolras shook his head, coming back to himself. "I am sorry," he repeated, "I did not mean to be so distracted in our company…I shall attend more rigorously." Combeferre looked at him sharply at the tone and words, but Enjolras was still distracted. He did not want to look back to the man with the glasses, but – sternly reproving himself for cowardice – he turned his attention back to the private box. To his relief, the man was conversing with a woman seated next to him. The unpleasant disorientation he could not, however, shake off.

************

Bossuet and Joly obligingly collected their cloakroom tickets so only two needed to brave the crush to claim coats and hats.

"I've lost mine," Courfeyrac shrugged. "There's another hat gone. This season's, too. I could stock a hatters with headware I've lost."

"No, I have your ticket here from when I checked it," Bossuet smiled. "Enjolras?"

"Thank you, Bossuet, but I seem to have misplaced it." He frowned, pulling a calling card with a journalist's name jotted on the back, a few coins, and a piece of paper with the jotted titles of some legal texts from his interior pocket.

"Pardon Monsieur – I believe this ticket might belong to you? It was on the floor" a soft, insinuating voice said at his elbow. He looked up from the meagre contents of his pocket, and then straightened abruptly. It was the man from the audience.

The card fluttered from his grasp, and the man caught it deftly in one hand. "Yours, also" he said. The accent was Eastern European. Bohemia, perhaps. They were the same height, and the eyes that locked on his were…

Impossible. They flashed silver. No, he corrected himself. That was a momentary impression. They were a muddy, non-descript colour. He reached out his hand automatically to accept the return of the card and the clockroom ticket. He could not look away as their fingers touched.

"Thank you," he murmered. Wanting to break the gaze, unable to do so. But it was the other man who broke eye contact first. He touched his cane to his hat brim and turned. "You are welcome." Enjolras stood gazing after him while Bossuet plucked the ticket from his fingers.

"Shall we wait near the entrance?" Combeferre asked. Enjolras shook his head quickly, as if trying to clear his sight.

"Yes."

Combeferre steadied him as he tripped and nearly stumbled descending the stairs.

***********

"Yes, I saw her – she was two rows back from the pit, was she not. I tell you, Joly, it was not Floriana."

"How could you tell under all that paint? She wore more than the actresses," Joly asked, striding after his friend, who seemed even more ebulliant than before now that he had finally been released onto the Rue de Richelieu.

"I know her," Courfeyrac insisted stubbornly. "The ears were wrong."

"The _ears_?" Joly asked incredulously.

"Will you come back with us for something to eat?" Combeferre asked of Enjolras, who trailed at a slight distance from the group. A reflective mood was not uncommon, but this was distraction – and if Enjolras was distracted, Combeferre would usually know the reason why. "I shan't be too late myself, but we could dine and walk back together."

Enjolras looked at him as if suddenly aware who it was who stood before him. "I don't think so, my friend," he replied mechanically, and then to Combeferre's surprise grasped his hand in a polite handshake as if he were an acquaintance newly introduced to the Society. "I shall leave you gentlemen to it."

Enjolras declining a social invitation was nothing to be surprised at. It was his manner that made Combeferre stand a moment, head tilted to one side, watching as his friend detached himself from the group and began to walk away towards the Seine. Enjolras would ignore some social pleasantries, but this was abrupt even for him. He wondered briefly if their leader, who usually preferred to let the good natured jests of the Amis pass over him rather than take offense, felt on this occasion that his comrades had taken too many liberties. But he had not seemed offended – there had been nary a scathing look for anyone that evening, not even ringmaster Courfeyrac. Ah well, Combeferre thought with a sigh, Enjolras will explain when he is ready. He allowed himself to be engaged by Prouvaire with a question about Scribe.

Bahorel watched Enjolras walk away, having noted his exchange with Combeferre and his friend's demenour.

Some men might prefer to consider themselves connoisseurs of women, wine, art or the theatre. Bahorel was willing to concede that all these excellent things had their charms, their place, and he liked to partake of them too, but he himself was an unabashed, discerning enthusiast of a fight. Whether it was a street emeute or a tavern brawl, he observed, analysed and savoured the nuances.

His friends marvelled at his ability to forecast the progress of a physical dispute, and – if he himself wasn't an active participant – he would amuse himself by predicting the actions of the antagonists. Bahorel knew the pitch of aggression in a drunk's voice that prefigured a punch, could anticipate whether the drunk or his target would strike the first blow, would identify who in the crowd of bystanders would attempt to keep the peace and who would embroil themselves. He could point to the small, quiet man in the corner and inform his comrades that it was that one, rather than the beefy braggart standing in the middle of the room, who would prove to be the truly dangerous man, the one to land the king punch.

Likewise, it was Bahorel, instinctively in tune with the mood of a crowd, who knew the precise moment when an audience assembled to hear a street orator would turn on each other, and what the progress of such a disruption was likely to be. All the better to judge when to throw himself into it, and when to light the fires of discord himself, the incendiary words or actions that would lead to the flare up.

He trusted his reading of any situation involving physical violence. And right now, something was whispering a warning to him. Above the heads of the laughing, good humoured crowd that milled outside the theatre, he looked to where Enjolras was walking away from them.

Bahorel had great faith in Enjolras' capabilities to defend himself. Back in the early days, as the ABC was still coalescing, some of those who had flitted in and out of their circle had expressed their doubts at such a youthful, pretty boy's ability to guard himself, let alone fight on the offensive. Bahorel had reserved his judgement, noting that the light frame hid reserves of endurance, that the pale blond rarely seemed fatigued late at night, and showed up clear-eyed early in the morning. His wrists might have been small, his long fingers elegant and even delicate in appearance, but Bahorel had seen his strong grip and strength in lifting heavy books, tables and even once putting a firm restraining hand on an overenthusiastic young student who had wished to throw an importune punch at a street gathering.

Bahorel's suspicions had been confirmed the first time he'd Enjolras in a bona fide fight, a skirmish with some loyalists who were vocal in their support for Charles X's divine rights and who objected to the placards the group of students were plastering up on walls near the Hôtel de Ville. Right before Bahorel's own red battle rage had descended and he'd lost himself in the fulfilling ecstasy of a good riot, he'd had a chance to see Enjolras standing his ground, cool, alert, and guarding himself, before – astonishingly – demonstrating that he was quite adept at _savate_ techniques. Bahorel had come through that incident with a splendid black eye, Courfeyrac with a split lip that did not enhance his smile, and Bossuet with a concussion that had Joly throwing fits. Enjolras had emerged with not had so much as a bruise nor a scratch, unless one counted a slight scrape on his knuckles.

In July 1830, Bahorel had noted that Enjolras was also more than passingly adept at _Bâton français_, wielding a carbine like a staff once his ammunition had run out. Quite where a law student had learned these skills Bahoral didn't know. Enjolras had made a passing reference to having studied under Casseux, but Bahorel observed that Enjolras used a few techniques belonging more to the streets or to sailors. Well, he did know Marseille well. When he'd mentioned to Enjolras that some of his moves could be seen as ignoble to the more refined practicioners of the art, Enjolras had fixed him with an arch look and responded that as he fought for the people it was appropriate to be thoroughly conversant with their art of combat, and not to confine himself to polite bourgeoise interpretations of it. It was remarks like that which lead Bahorel to wonder if Enjolras might have a sense of humour after all, but with that straight and inflexible delivery he might also have been perfectly in earnest.

So when others expressed concern at Enjolras' solitary missions on dark streets in some of the less salubrious quartiers, Bahorel merely grunted his dissent. Prouvaire he kept a close eye on, Bossuet and Joly he sometimes accompanied at certain hours and places, and if Courfeyrac (not quite as adept a drinker as he himself chose to believe) was in his cups, Bahorel made sure of either escorting him to his door or of putting him safely in a cab. Feuilly, too, he would join when he fan maker insisted on visiting the more dangerous Faubourgs, trying to recruit others to their cause. Of them all, Enjolras was one of the most capable of looking after himself, and in spite of his high visibility and lack of fear, the one Bahorel knew to have the skills of self-preservation.

But tonight, the nagging, instinctual feeling of danger wouldn't dissipate. Bahorel didn't consider himself an imaginative man, but he sensed that something wasn't right.

Enjolras' movements could be mysterious at the best of times, and Bahorel made it a rule never to question them. His chief seemed distracted, but he could frequently seem distant. Perhaps it was that the nature of this preoccupation seemed different. Enjolras had seemed not merely to be thinking of something else, but to be befogged, like a man under the influence of an opiate.

Joly clapped a hand on his back. "Come on, Bahorel – join us for a late supper? I need to fumigate my lungs after being exposed to all the bad humours in there – the Comédie is in bad need of cleaning. A cigar or two will do the trick. We're off to the Café des Deux Portes." That would take them north.

Bahorel smiled at him. "I may join you in a bit. I just want to run a little errand..." he glanced over his friends. Courfeyrac had managed to keep his level of intoxication topped up and was, if anything, getting louder and merrier. Prouvaire and Joly…well, they'd be harmonizing along with Courfeyrac in a minute. Combeferre? He was working at the hospital early in the morning, and Bahorel didn't want to alarm him over what was probably nothing. That left Bossuet. Bahorel pulled him aside.

"A moment, Lesgle? Can I ask a favour? Would you accompany me for a short time?"

Bossuet was slightly put out, that much was evident. "Well, that rather depends on where and how long, doesn't it? It's a bad turn to do a friend to drag him away from company and good pastime unless it's quite important."

"Come on, Bossuet – this shouldn't take long, and I'll tell you along the way."

Suddenly Bossuet's eyes lit up. "One of your errands, is it? Is this…Society business?" He lowered his voice theatrically.

"Yes," smiled Bahoral, "we need to follow someone."

Bossuet smiled with delight, and called out to Joly, who was trotting off after the others who were already strolling arm in arm down the street (and there they go, thought Bahorel – I hope they don't get arrested for singing _that_ song, the lyrics would make even a bawd's toes curl). "Tell the others we'll be along soon – and if not, then leave the door unlocked for me." Joly waved his acknowledgment and caught up with his friends.

"Now," Bossuet said, trying to sound very earnest, "who is the target of our surveillance tonight?"

"Enjolras."

"_Enjolras_?" Bossuet exclaimed. "What? Why? Didn't we see enough of him today? Do you suspect he has a grisette tucked away and is betraying the revolution?" He chuckled at the clumsy joke.

"I have a feeling something is going to happen."

"Ah…one of your hunches. Well, if he catches us, I'm going to tell him that you thought he was sneaking off to report to Lafayette on our movements."

"If you don't quiet down, you'll never be any good at this sort of thing. And right now, we're in danger of losing sight of him." He could still see the tall man ahead ahead, visible even among the milling sidewalk crowds, inclined slightly forward as Enjolras gazed at the ground. That posture, looking down, served to prod the whisper of warning again. Enjolras always walked upright with his shoulders back.

**********

Irma had saluted him with a wish for good hunting when they parted at the theatre, she herself taking the barouche back to their establishment in Marais. She was looking lusciously well fed, having fully sated herself merely two nights before. Her lips and cheeks were still flushed with colour, although he had to admit that he thought the current doll-like fashions did not suit her. The dainty curls clustered around the forehead were an incongruous contrast with long face and strong features.

His prey had made it a simple matter to facilitate their contact, dropping his cloakroom ticket as he had. The ensuing physical touch had enabled him to reinforce the rapport he had already established across the theatre, enough to exert the control he needed.

And now to the pursuit. He lingered under the façade's colonnade, watching the group of students as they gathered on the street outside. His kind had a special talent for avoiding notice when it suited their ends, but in this instance, the boys were far too absorbed in each other and their buffoonery to pay attention to one more patron lurking at the entrance, waiting for his carriage. Their voices were too loud, their spirits running at full tide.

There was a certain thrill in knowing that tomorrow they would be mourning one of their own, and all that fleeting, living gaiety would be extinguished.

He could feel the connection between himself and his victim, watching the slowness of the student's steps, already walking as if he were a somnambulist. It had been a delicious moment when the prey had sighted him in the theatre. The blond had chosen him as much as he had chosen the boy. Irma did not understand this – she had no finesse. She could as soon as dine on a coarse workingman as a nobleman, and in that he supposed she was truly democratic, shrugging her pale shoulders and admitting as much, saying that one warm body was the same as another.

To him, the nature of the prey was all. And as Orssich watched the young man break away from his friends, his unconscious grace muted by the spell under which he had fallen, his head bowed as if he walked into the wind, the undead creature felt his still, unbeating heart sing within him. The boy was beautiful, and would feed more than Orssich's blood appetite. To exert his power over something so exquisite, to break him, to annihilate him, would be the greater pleasure.

Orssich tapped the ground with his cane and thought of the route by which he would intercept the student. Come tomorrow morning, and the vibrant being he stalked would be a cold husk in a narrow alley. He would make a very lovely, very white corpse on a slab of ice in the Paris Morgue. His nude body would be a sculptural form amidst all the vulgar naked suicides and murder victims, the latest haul from the Seine, the unidentified scum of the streets. He would shine all the brighter in such company, unmarred save for an unobtrusive wound on the neck. Orssich might even join the throngs of the curious to see the fleeting art he was going to create – he would have to investigate the opening times.

He began to walk to the south east, knowing precisely where he would pick up the trail of the young man who now wandered in a dark dream towards his extinction.

*************

Bossuet was confused. "This isn't the way to the Quartier. We're heading east now…what could induce him to go here at this time of night?"

"I don't know," Bahorel said abruptly. He didn't like anything about this situation. Enjolras, still in sight up ahead, moved with steady footfalls, but he did not look left or right. He paused to allow traffic to pass, but did not seem to see importuning street vendors, or even react when a porter dropped a large case of fruit alongside where he walked, the air colouring with the man's voluble curses.

Had it been any of their other friends, Bahorel would have caught up, jostled him good-naturedly, and fallen into step with him while asking what manner of business brought him here. With Enjolras, if it did turn out that he was conducting some business associated with his connections throughout the other Societies, it would be an unwarranted liberty.

Enjolras, always conspicuous, was drawing more attentive looks now that they approached the Faubourg Saint-Marcel. And Bahorel wasn't all that confident about their own safety. He walked with purpose, defying any hostile eyes that might be directed at himself and Bossuet. But Enjolras…

"All we can do is keep him in sight," he told Bossuet.

It was almost precisely that moment that he realised Enjolras had turned into the warren of sidestreets.

"Don't let him get too far ahead!" Bahorel exclaimed. This was enough – as soon as they caught up with their chief, Bahorel was going to demand an explanation. Enjolras was irresponsible to be so careless with his own safety.

But when they had pushed passed the scattered late night walkers on the Avenue Des Gobelins and reached the open mouth of the sidestreet, they saw only the opening darkness of more alleyways, more recesses, and no indication of which way Enjolras might have gone.

************

Orssich, waiting the cul-de-sac, bordered by three tenements with darkened windows, saw the precise moment that his prey came back to full awareness. Curious. He had broken the mesmeric spell moments before Orssich would have lifted it himself, the better to enjoy the kill. He stopped abruptly, shook his head, and sharply turned his head from side to side, only now aware that he was surrounded by near complete darkness. Orssich could admire the will by which he brought the panic under control, completely lost as he must be, with no knowledge of how he came to be standing in this dark alley. He did not see Orssich in the shadows, with not even breath to betray his utter stillness. Orssich could see the wide blue eyes straining to penetrate the dark, taking in the lesser dark of the entrance to the alley, turning in that direction.

It was then that Orssich slid with unnatural speed behind him, grabbing his upper arms. The reaction was immediate, and not one that the undead creature expected. Instead of a scream and frantic struggle, the student drove backwards with his elbows to try and throw him off balance, then jerked forward, twisting, trying to release the hold on him.

"Let me go! I have nothing…"

Orssich shifted his left arm around the boy's torso, pinning his upper arms to his side, then used his free hand to untie the cravat, unwinding it with a wrench, pulling down his collar, then jerking the golden head to the side and exposing the neck. The rapid breathing of his prey vibrated through his touch, the increasingly frantic movements, small within the confines of Orssich's arms.

"Let me go!"

A last cry from his prey, and Orssich, his ultra-acute senses heightened even more by the charged tension of fear, feeling that warm and virile body powerless in his hands, savoured the moment.

Then he drove his bared fangs into the boy's neck, and the protests died in his victim's throat. The skin was soft over the tight muscles, tensed now in a futile attempt to flee. The warm splash of blood hit Orssich's mouth, filling it, almost spilling over his lips. He began to drink, to suck down the hot fluid, burning against his cold lips.

What would come next was the surrender. The brief flickering up of life, and then the relaxation into the seduction of death. He had experienced it so many times…that near orgasmic gasp as the powerful sensations of his vampiric hold overwhelmed the victim, killing them even as they were overwhelmed with desire. He would drain every vestige of life, and of this one's burning soul.

He supported the prey, holding him upright as his arms weakened, hanging uselessly, and his legs began to give way. Strange images flickered through his mind. Smoke and fire and shot. Blood red flags and red dawns. And beyond that, a beautiful and distant vista.

Distracted, he was unprepared when suddenly the victim tensed again and, unbelievably, wrenched himself away from his grasp, his teeth scoring along the skin of the boy's neck. One canine caught in the youth's shirt as he pulled away and was almost wrenched out. Pain. He had not anticipated it - it was unprecedented. This was not how the hunt reached its dénouement.

"No!" the student said, rounding on him. Through their connection, he had sense Orssich's predatory intent. "No! I am not yours. Mad man, you will not have me."

Orssich felt a searing moment of anger. He would rip the boy's throat out with his teeth and drink his fill from the stump of his neck. He took a step forward, and, although the boy still could not see him properly in the dark, the student took a crouched defensive stance towards where he assumed his assailant stood.

Orssich regarded him closely, watching the keen eyes dart quickly from side to side, seeking any sign of movement in the dark, looking for a way out or his assailant, shaking not, Orssich realised with surprise, from terror, but with an incandescent fury that matched his own, almost overwhelming his underlying fear. The vampire felt a surge of absolute delight completely subsuming his anger. This creature was magnificent.

Far, far too good to be merely a night's sport. And far too precious to be lost to those dreams of smoke and shot.

Enjolras. That was the name he had extracted from the boy's mind. Enjolras. He would join them. Even Madame Vep could not object to the admission of this gorgeous creature into their throng.

And before that occurred, he would enjoy every exquisite agony Enjolras' soul could offer as he turned his face inexorably from the light.

Orssich slid behind Enjolras and took him in his arms, almost gently, but utterly without yielding. Enjolras gave cry of rage as he felt his arms pinned once again, and this time his struggles were in vain.

"You are wrong. You are mine, Enjolras" Orssich murmured to him, before bending his head to feed. He could hear the sound of running feet and voices just beyond the alley, searching, but by the time they reached the cul-de-sac it would be too late. Enjolras was still mumbling a single word, "no", through numb lips, but as Orssich nuzzled his mouth into the blood flowing from his veins, the boy grew fainter, before finally collapsing, entirely limp, supported only by the arms of his attacker.

Orssich, feeling intoxicated by the blood and by the struggle, finally pulled himself away before he drank too deeply. He lowered Enjolras to the ground, a pitiable, nearly lifeless form, almost indistinguishable from the darkness of the dirt he lay on.


	2. Chapter 2 The Light of a Tallow Candle

_Author note: Thanks to all those who have reviewed this so far, and to TheHighestPie for the betawork._

**Chapter 2**

_**If there is a well-attested history in the world, it is that of the Vampires. **_

_**Nothing is missing from it: interrogations, certifications by Notables, Surgeons, Parish Priests, Magistrates. The judicial proof is one of the most complete. And with all that, who believes in Vampires? Will we all be damned for not having believed?**_

Jean-Jacques Rousseau,_ Letter to Beaumont, _1764

Bahorel weighed up the possibility of sending Bossuet to search in another direction, but decided that Enjolras, when they found him, might need the assistance of both. There was little light in the warren of buildings. Neither moon, nor starlight penetrated here, nothing save the odd gleam shining through a tattered curtain or blind. In these poverty-stricken streets, few could afford oil for lamps or any but the cheapest candles. Most of the inhabitants would be up before dawn to try and eke out whatever existence they could among these streets. Those with a job in manufacturing could consider themselves well off – many were reduced to scavenging what they could among the refuse.

The alleys stank with rubbish, urine and night soil rotting in the warm spring night. Bahorel and Bossuet were used to such foul odours in the city, but even they paused every now and then at a particularly rank juncture to put their sleeves over their noses. "Why couldn't Enjolras conduct his affairs in a nice clean quarry?" Bossuet wondered aloud.

"Because he is Enjolras." Bahorel stated flatly. "He can walk through this muck like a salamander walks through fire and remain untouched…"

Somewhere, nearby, came a strangled cry, and a few words in a recognisable voice, though with an unfamiliar frantic note to it that they couldn't quite make out. Bahorel put out a warning hand across Bossuet's chest to pre-emptively silence him. "Quiet!" he hissed. "He's been set upon – we have to find out by how many. But fast!"

The subdued sounds of a struggle resounded off the walls around them in the strange acoustics of the warren of buildings, adding to the disorientation of the darkness. Then another low cry, and silence.

They found him quite by accident, turning into the alley, Bossuet tripping over a still form on the ground. "Is it him?" he asked, groping down through the darkness. It was certainly a body.

"See if it is," said Bahorel grimly, standing watch, looking for movement in the surrounding dark. His eyes were more accustomed now to the lack of illumination, and he could dimly make out the boundaries of the cul-de-sac.

Bossuet knelt in the dirt, trying not to think of what might be in the filth around him. He rolled over the body, which had been lying face down. It felt slack and heavy – unconscious or dead, he thought grimly – and felt good quality cloth beneath his hands. Enjolras. He dressed simply, but well. Bossuet felt the shallow, quick breaths in his friend's chest, and reached for his face, his hands briefly touching the chin and neck, and then pausing as his fingers came into contact with skin that was slick with moisture.

"He's bleeding," Bossuet said as calmly as possible.

"Head or chest?" Bahorel asked, equally restrained.

"I can't tell…it might be his head…no, the flesh seems to be torn around his neck." He swallowed hard, trying to feel the extent of the wound, wondering if someone had tried to slit Enjolras's throat. But no – it was too low down, and seemed to be a small area. He undid his own cravat and pressed it to where he judged the wound to be. "The bleeding doesn't seem too copious. We have to get him out of this filth and get a look at it."

"Pardon me, gentlemen, but might I assist?" came a softly accented, cultured voice from the mouth of the cul-de-sac. Bahorel turned quickly in that direction, startled at having missed the approach of another party.

"And who are you?" he challenged, wariness and fear making his voice harsh. "Do you know anything about what has taken place here?"

There was a scratch and a spurt of foul sulphurous odour, distinguishable even among all the other rank smells of the alley, and a small glow of fire where the stranger held up a lucifer. The students caught a briefly illuminated look at the smooth curls and rich waistcoat of a fashionably dressed man who might have been in his thirties. "I have only just happened upon this scene – I heard voices. But if that is your friend lying on the ground, perhaps we should see to his welfare before we are formally introduced."

Bahorel grunted his agreement. "Have you more lucifers?" The stranger obliged and passed one over the prone man's face. Bossuet sucked in a sharp intake of breath, seeing Enjolras' usually pale complexion now had a corpse-like pallor beneath the mud splatter and bloody smears. He gingerly lifted his cravat to take a better look at the wound, but could not tell how deep it ran beneath the surface gore. The flame flickered out.

"Can we get him into one of these homes?" Bossuet asked, looking dubiously at the dark buildings around them. Without answering, Bahorel began banging on doors.

"Hey! We need assistance! There's an injured man here!" Knowing that the inhabitants were unlikely to wish to involve themselves in an incident in the street at this late hour, he thought of an inducement. "Five francs for the household that assists us!"

Finally a door opened a crack and a thin male face appeared above a tallow candle.

"You need assistance, Monsieur?" Half afraid, half hopeful at the prospect of the reward.

"Thank you, yes – we need to get our friend off the street. We won't disturb you for long."

The owner of the voice snorted. "For five francs, Monsieur, you can disturb the entire household if you choose." He opened the door wide and beckoned them inside.

Bossuet supported Enjolras's head and shoulders against his chest while Bahorel took up his feet. They followed their benefactor through the short passageway and into a small front room, where a woman nursed a baby on one hip and three little girls, ranging in age from about two to ten, were gathered in a tight knot, wide eyed and apprehensive. From the piles of rags and straw mattresses on the floor, Bahorel realised that the entire family must occupy this one small room, sleeping and living all together in this squalor. The woman silently cleared the table in the centre of the room. It wasn't large enough to accommodate Enjolras' full length as they gently lowered him onto it, and his long legs draped over the end. Better than one of those filthy, flea infested sacks on the floor, Bahorel thought as he removed his coat and bundled it under Enjolras' head. The male householder held up the foul-smelling tallow candle, apparently the only light they had.

"His breathing is very shallow," Bossuet commented as Bahorel unbuttoned his friend's waistcoat to ease his inhalations. "But the bleeding doesn't seem too copious now," he added, looking again under the makeshift bandage at his neck. Bahorel gave the pale cheek a few light pats, but the eyelids didn't flicker. He lifted Enjolras' head gently to examine it for any other injury. None was in evidence.

"We need to get him to Combeferre and Joly and back to his apartment. It doesn't seem too serious a wound" Bahorel noted, having seen many worse, "but he's dead out."

"Would we be able to get a fiacre to venture into this neighbourhood at night?" Bossuet asked.

"Perhaps I can assist you," said the stranger. The students had forgotten his presence, as he stood quietly in the background. "I could fetch you a means of conveyance."

Bahorel stood up and surveyed their would-be benefactor critically. "Citizen, may I ask what it was that brought you to this place so late at night?" He gestured at the man's expensive attire. "You don't seem to be the sort to frequent Saint-Marcel at any time of day, let alone the middle of the night."

The stranger took no apparent offence. "It is ungentlemanly to ask a stranger's private business," he said lightly. "One could ask the same of you. And is it not fortunate for you that I did happen to be passing this way?"

Bahorel reluctantly held out his hand, something still setting his nerves on edge. Whatever business this man had here, it was not likely to be commendable. And there was something about his manner that was undefinably odd. "My name is Bahorel – this is Bossuet. Our friend is Enjolras."

Bahorel had half expected from the man's aristocratic attire and accent that he might refuse the egalitarian handshake, but instead he responded with the own unusually cold hand and a short, odd bow. "Graf Ambrus Szép – your humble servant. And now, shall I see about that transport for you?"

"Perhaps I should walk part of the way at least with you," Bossuet said, "towards the River. I'll go on and find Combeferre and Joly, Bahorel – they should still be at the Café, or I'll intercept them on the way back. I'll take them back to Enjolras' rooms and will meet you there." He leaned in and whispered, "If you think it is quite safe to leave you two here?"

"We don't have much of a choice," Bahorel said, eyeing the family, who stood by almost unnervingly quiet. The eldest of the girls had slipped out of the room. "Enjolras will have to be in the care of his beloved abaissé until we can get him home."

The man who had introduced himself as Szép and Bossuet left, the male householder walking with them as far as the alley entrance. Bahorel turned his attention back to Enjolras, who had not moved since they had put him on the table. He knew a bit about rudimentary first aid after a fight, but there seemed little to do in this case but wait for his chief to wake up. There wouldn't be any reviving spirits in this poor house, and he doubted if any of the rags would be clean enough to do much more than smear the dirt around his features. He combed the tangled hair back from Enjolras' forehead with his fingers in a gesture his friends would have found surprisingly gentle. "Ah, my friend – sometimes those people you fight for are not as tender towards you as they should be."

He felt a tugging at his elbow, and looked down to see the girl balancing a basin of water on hip and holding a newly rinsed rag that was cleaner than her tattered dress. She must have gone to the communal pump to fetch water for their visitor.

"Might I help, Monsieur?" She asked softly, and her engaging look of appeal softened her gaunt features. How old was she, he wondered – ten? Twelve? And already twisted by hunger and want, her frame stunted and somehow crooked. He smiled at her.

"I would appreciate your assistance, Citizeness – perhaps you might help me clean his wound?" She returned his smile eagerly, and with great gentleness, lifted the cravat and began to dab at the neck wound. Bahorel had thought Enjolras might stir at the touch of the cool water, but he remained still. Unnaturally so, the thought crossed Bahorel's mind, but then the girl looked up suddenly.

"He comes from very far away, doesn't he, Monsieur?" she asked.

"From the Midi," Bahorel answered automatically. She cocked her head to the side and regarded Enjolras's white face, more statue-like than ever, ethereal in the guttering candlelight, all the more unreal in the midst of the dirt that covered his clothes and matted the hair on the side of his head, but unpolluted by the filth.

"Further away than that, I think." She said thoughtfully, and resumed cleaning his wound with a sure, soft touch.

**********

Bossuet had felt uneasy walking next to Graf, his companion silent and intimidating in spite of his foppish attire. Then suddenly he had begun to speak, and his manner of speech was so charming that in spite of the grim nature of their errand, Bossuet had relaxed in his company and began to think the aristocrat not such a bad fellow after all. They had parted ways along the Boulevard Saint-Michel, with Bossuet continuing his way towards the Café, hailing a fiacre along the way.

Bossuet was beginning to feel the effects of the long night and the repeated crossings of the city, and it was relief with that he heard a barrage of Courfeyrac's raucus laughter as he entered the lively warmth of the Café des Deux Portes. His friends had so far forgotten themselves as to remove their dress coats and were sitting in their shirt sleeves in the upstairs room, having apparently abandoned a billiards game. Prouvarie still held his cue absentmindedly, but the emphatic pointing of fingers had started, he noticed. Courfeyrac's expressive hands were sketching shapes in the air as he dissected Lamartine's verses (he'd been reading _Méditations poétiques_ earlier, having borrowed it from Bossuet). Joly had his head buried in his arms and was shaking with laughter. Prouvaire seemed a little flushed and emphatic in his rebuttals, but he smiled and called out when he saw his friend.

"You're too late for the spatchcock," he said, "but there's some excellent nonsense from Courfeyrac on offer if you're of a mind to stomach it. He's arguing about verse with a very fine legalistic mind."

"Has Combeferre left yet?" Bossuet asked, wondering how much sense he was going to get out of his friends.

"Well, that's a fine greeting." Courfeyrac snorted, somehow managing to balance his chair on the two back legs, flinging one of his own legs on the table. "I shouldn't have thought you'd be desperately keen for his company unless you really want to know the specific applications of rotatory magnetism." He paused thoughtfully "although, you know, he does have a fine singing tenor. And that's a rare good quality in a friend."

"Enjolras has been attacked."

There was instant uproar – the three friends asking questions at once, Courfeyrac letting his chair fall with a resounding thud back into place with all four legs on the floor. Bossuet spoke over them. "He's unconscious, but the only wound seems to be a superficial one. Bahorel is bringing him round to his apartment, and I'm to meet him there.

Joly was on his feet and putting his coat on, with some fumbling. Courfeyrac seemed stunned for a moment, considering the news. "Bahorel was there? Does Enjolras' assailant still have a limb to call his own?"

"We were nearby, but didn't see what happened. His attackers got away." Bossuet remembered that they hadn't checked Enjolras' pockets to see if he'd been robbed. The circumstances of the attack had the sinister implications of a trap, but perhaps it had been simply an unfortunate set of circumstances.

Joly was sifting through the coins in his purse, and Courfeyrac and Prouvaire did likewise. "Here," said Courfeyrac, sorting the money they put on the table into piles, "we've enough to cover the bill here and get you there in a fiacre." Prouvaire peered at the coins and counted them again, redoing Courfeyrac's completely incorrect calculations.

"We'll try to find Combeferre along the way," Bossuet said to Joly. Joly nodded, taking a drink of water – Bossuet knew he was trying to sober up.

"Should we come? Is there anything we can do?" Courfeyrac asked, and Bossuet shuddered. The last thing the scene needed was a Courfeyrac on hand, full to the brim.

"I don't think so…perhaps you can call around tomorrow? We'll send for you if there's any news." Courfeyrac nodded, seeming very sincerely concerned if somewhat unfocused. "Make sure he gets home," Bossuet murmured to the more sober Prouvaire.

"Combeferre left half an hour ago…he should almost be home by now." Joly said as they left the Café.

*******************

Bahorel was quite resistent to Orssich's charms. He had grunted his acknowledgement when Orssich had returned to the tenenment and had not asked how much the aristocrat had paid to the driver of the fiacre to get him to venture into such an unsalubrious neighbourhood – it had been a not-inconsiderable sum. He seemed more appreciative of the efforts of the young girl who was trying to brush the drying mud off Enjolras's clothes. He saw Bahorel surreptitiously slip her another coin after he paid her father the money promised, and tell her that he was certain that the beautiful stranger who had come into their home under such odd circumstances would be quite alright. She nodded a solemn understanding.

With the father, he exchanged a few cryptic words about workers and striking, apparently the continuation of a conversation that had taken place while Orssich was out of the room. The man had shrugged noncomittally, looking at Orssich in embarrassment, as if ashamed to be caught in such a conversation with a man of wealth standing nearby, or perhaps merely afraid. Orssich had already gained a vague impression of the subversive activities the students were engaged in through his connection with Enjolras, but such things were a matter of amusing indifference to the revenant.

"Would you be so good as to help me with my friend?" Bahorel asked. Orssich wondered if he was aware of the undertone of possessive protectiveness in his voice. He smiled winningly, as if it were nothing, and took Enjolras's feet. He could easily have taken the whole burden himself, but it would be as well not to show his formidable strength.

It had been a silent, uncomfortable ride in the carriage to Enjolras's address some streets away from the Luxembourg Gardens. Enjolras still showed no signs of awakening, as Orssich knew he would not. Bahorel did not seem to realise quite how much blood loss his friend had suffered. Orssich contributed a clean handkerchief to press against the wound, and Bahorel propped his friend in the corner, sitting alongside, holding the cloth firmly to Enjolras's neck.

Another personality might have been induced by the unnerving silence to attempt nervous conversation, but Bahorel, he adjudged, was comfortable in keeping an intimidating stillness. The man, with his exuberantly coloured waistcoat, was built like a bull and was a a presence of solid muscle with a short grizzled beard. He exuded suspicion, apparently considering Orssich as a natural foe in whom he was forced into uneasy alliance. Had the vampire been a man – say, the fop that Bahorel took him for – he might have been uncomfortable in his presence. As it was, he was amused.

They pulled up in silence. Bahorel allowed him to pay the balance owed to the driver, which entertained Orssich further – he suspected that an awake and aware Enjolras would not have allowed his bills to be met in that way.

"Wait here a moment," Bahorel said with obvious reluctance. "I'll get the porter."

"Will they not be concerned at the late hour?"

Bahorel shrugged. "My friend keeps unusual hours," he said, and then with the first flash of humour Orssich had seen, added, "It's a good thing his concierge accords him the respect usually reserved for plaster saints. She adores him. I think the bleeding has stopped, but you may want to hold this to his neck."

As Bahorel went to rouse the household staff, Orssich slid onto the seat next to Enjolras, whose fair head leaned against the side apholstry and Bahorel's bundled up coat. The vampire felt again the charge of anticipation as he briefly ran a hand over the soft skin of Enjolras' cheek, then buried his fingers in the boy's hair. Concentrating, he found a flicker of thought, struggling desperately towards awareness. The vampire smothered it, sending his victim deeper into a confused sleep, clouding his memories. Enjolras exhaled a sigh, and his consciousness fled further into the recesses of his mind.

It had been more difficult than Orssich anticipated, and he was so absorbed in his task that he almost didn't hear Bahorel's footsteps approach the side of the carriage door. He withdrew his hand just as the door opened, and Bahorel looked quickly from one to the other, unsure, but sensing something amiss. He paused a moment, then seemed to make up his mind.

"Hand him down to me. Easy."

Orssich obliged, following him out of the carriage, supporting the feet again. A tall, bony woman was there, holding aloft a lantern. A porter stood at the door. As they made their way up the steps, Orssich flashed him a look.

"Please, bring him this way," the porter said in obedient response to the unspoken command.

Thus invited, Orssich entered the building.


	3. Chapter 3 A House in Darkness

_Thank you to all the reviewers - yes, these vampires do require an invitation, albeit not an engraved one. Chapters two and three were originally plotted as a single chapters, but as they grew quite lengthy I divided them at an appropriate point - thus the reason Enjolras is out of action for longer than I'd intended. That will all change with Chapter 4. _

_TheHightestPie is as patient as she is talented - thank goodness she's done the beta work on this._ _I've no doubt that errors will insert themselves after I publish (as if by magic they appear), but she's saved me from some utter clangers. _

**Chapter 3**

_**Of the moonless nights they are kings,  
darkness is their kingdom.  
Carrying death and sowing terror  
the dark Vampires fly,  
with great suede wings,  
ready not only to do evil... but to do even worse**_

_Les Vampires _(1915)

Combeferre reached his rooms before Bossuet caught up with him, having dropped Joly off at Enjolras's apartment first. Joly had sent word through his friend that he could probably manage the situation himself and Combeferre need not attend, but the other medical student had wordlessly taken up his bag and returned with Bossuet. It was only a few minutes away, and even if, as Bossuet had stressed, it did not seem too serious, he needed to see for himself that Enjolras would recover. The unconsciousness was a concern.

The very idea of Enjolras weak or in any way ailing seemed utterly incongruous to the medical student. They had known each other most of their lives, through mutual family connections, and he had never known Enjolras to be anything but the very essence of health. Slender, yes, and perhaps even appearing fragile in that slim frame. But strong, and supple as a reed – or a rapier blade.

He had never known him ill, or even showing signs of weakness beyond fatigue, and even that was exceptional. His ability to stay awake late into the night was prodigious. They had shared rooms when Enjolras began his law studies, and Combeferre recalled his friend's amusement at his habit of wrapping wet towels around his head to stay awake while studying for examinations. He vividly remembered one late night as they sat across from each other, deep in revision, when Enjolras had suddenly looked up from his books, regarded him very seriously for a few moments, told him the turban made him look like Selim Pasha surveying his Seraglio, then bent his head back over his work. Combeferre had been as startled as if a priest had decided to jest in the confessional about the communion wine. It was only gradually that he had discovered that Enjolras was not utterly without an idiosyncratic sense of humour.

He had listened to Bossuet's story with a grim lack of surprise. It was inevitable, he supposed, that injury or illness would one day befall a friend who did not shy from a physical confrontation or from a visit to the disease plagued poorer districts.

The concierge, who had been sitting in the front room off the entryway, was ready to admit them. She had been fetching water and boiling kettles for the young Monsieur, she told them, and stood ready to assist in any way necessary. No, she was not fatigued, she assured Combeferre. M. Enjolras was a dear good boy, always so polite, and it was so unfortunate that this had befallen him. This was what came of all those agitators in the streets, she added, and she sincerely hoped that d'Orléans would soon set things right.

Combeferre smiled both at the perfect camouflage the woman provided and at the maternalistic feelings Enjolras evidently inspired in her. It was like observing a domestic cat purring over a young lion. Enjolras would be oblivious, of course, and surprised if it were pointed out to him that he had completely subjugated this shrewd old bourgeois with his unconscious charm. He had never seemed to be aware that many of the kind little attentions he received from others, particularly women of all ages, had less to do with manners and more to do with his personal charms.

They mounted the stairs to his rooms at the front of the house. The location was enviable – so near the gardens and the Sorbonne, and on the first floor – even if the building was not in the best state of repair or on a fashionable street. It was surrounded by buildings in a similar shabbily respectable state, and only a single carriage could pass on the narrow road in front. Combeferre had a vague impression that Enjolras used a small legacy from his mother to lease the rooms, maintaining the bedroom, sitting room, and a smaller annexe that could serve as both study and second bedroom. Enjolras occasionally needed to accommodate visitors, and had spoken to Combeferre of his hopes to acquire a printing press.

Combeferre had been in these rooms often enough not to be surprised at the comparative untidiness. As neatly compartmentalised and as efficient as Enjolras' mind was, and as personally immaculate in his clothing and person, he could not be persuaded that books belonged on the shelves. Madame Brun, the elderly woman, Enjolras admitted grudgingly once a week to do the small housekeeping tasks he did not attend to himself, knew better than to touch his books and papers. They lay in piles that threatened to topple over, and occasionally did. But Enjolras always knew exactly where to lay his hands on anything he needed, even if it required some excavation first to reach it.

"Madame Evers, if you could be so kind as to fetch us more water – oh, hello," Joly greeted them as they entered the bedroom, Bossuet remaining in the door so as not to crowd them. The bed had been pulled from the wall and the books in here piled along the sides of the room so as to allow easy access to the bed. They had found a clean nightshirt for Enjolras, who lay very still in the midst of the movement around him. "Would you just cast your eye over him, Combeferre? I'm about to dress the wound, but the bleeding has stopped. I don't think it will require stitching." He removed the temporary cloth cover over the neck. Combeferre thought how angry and red the violated flesh looked.

"This seems odd." He said after a moment's puzzled examination. "There seem to be puncture marks, but it's not a knife wound." He looked up at Joly, who nodded agreement. "And here, it seems as if something was drawn jaggedly across the neck. The bruising, too…" he paused. It reminded him of something he had seen somewhere before, but he could not quite recall where. "It looks like…an animal bite? Could he have been bitten by a dog?"

"Or an escaped lunatic," Joly suggested. "And another thing – look at this." He pulled back Enjolras' lips to reveal pale gums, then gently placed his fingertip on his eyelids and slid them back. "See the bluish tint to the whites of eyes?"

Combeferre nodded. "Heavy blood loss."

"But Bahorel tells me that, other than some blood on his neck and a slight oozing from the wound, there was nowhere near enough blood on his body or on the ground to account for these symptoms. And his clothes should be soaked," he gestured to where they lay discarded in a corner, "but there's just a few splatters on his shirt."

Combeferre thought of something.

"Is his cravat there?" Joly shook his head. "Bahorel, did you remove it at the scene?"

Bahorel looked puzzled. "I didn't see it in the alley, but you couldn't have seen a fist in front of your face, save for the lights from the lucifers. He certainly wasn't wearing it when we found him."

"Could he have tried to use it to staunch the flow?" Joly asked.

"Why would he have had it off in the first place?" Combeferre countered. "These wounds were inflicted on bare skin."

"It wasn't in his hand, either." Bahorel added, trying to recall the details of the scene. "Unless he dropped it when we picked it up and we didn't see. Say, Bossuet, where is your friend – that puffed-up Aristo?"

"He left with me when I went to get Combeferre. Said he didn't have any cards on him and I didn't get his address, but he said that he might call again sometime during the week. Do you think he had something to do with what happened?"

"Who is this?" Combeferre asked, distracted, as he pulled back Enjolras' eyelid again and examined it closer with a candle from the bedside table. "Joly, did you see this? His pupils are dilated. They're nearly as big as the irises."

Joly leaned in. "Do you think he was drugged?"

"He did seem under the influence of something," Bahorel said, leaning back against the wall, scratching his chin, recalling the earlier evening. "That's why I followed him."

Combeferre looked up, surprised. "You followed him?"

"Just to make sure he was all right. There was nothing too obvious," Bahorel explained. Combeferre thought about Enjolras' unusual abstraction at the theatre and on the street afterwards. Had he missed some vital sign?

"Do you think someone could have slipped him a drug in the theatre?" Joly asked him. Combeferre shook his head.

"He ate and drank nothing. I suppose he could have been given laudanum beforehand – that will sometimes make the patient excited and lively, acting as a stimulant before it becomes a depressant. But he didn't seem unduly agitated during the evening. And I don't think he could have walked far if he were under the influence of a narcotic. His breathing seems regular, if perhaps a bit shallow, so his respiratory system is not overly oppressed. And there's no sign of fever – he seems quite cool. Might need a thicker blanket."

Combeferre stood upright and looked down at his friend. "What could have lead you there?" he wondered aloud. "And why do you not wake up? How severe was the blood loss?"

"I hope he hasn't been exposed to anything in that foul corner of the city," Joly said. "Well, I don't see what more we can do for him tonight. I could send word to Dr. Boucher. He's working shifts tonight, and might be able to call in on his way home. But I think it's blood loss and the shock of the attack. No other injuries save some bruises on his upper arms, and we probably gave him those when we carried him. He'll wake soon." Enjolras's pale stillness seemed to belie this observation. "Should we report this incident to the police?"

"No," rumbled Bahorel, crossing his arms.

"Probably not," Combeferre agreed. "Not until he can tell us what happened" (and not then either, knowing Enjolras, he thought.) "We have no real reason yet to think he was targeted…" he hesitated, remembering the dilated eyes. But there could be another medical reason for that, other than drugs…he shuddered at the possibility of a brain injury, but the dilation was equal in both pupils, and there were no sign of contusions to the head. "It's a random attack."

"I'll remain here, anyway." Bahorel asserted. Joly nodded.

"I'll stay with him as well until he wakes, Combeferre. You're due at the Necker Hospital tomorrow morning, aren't you? Why don't you sleep in the study – I can wake you if his condition changes."

Combeferre nodded wearily. He extracted his pocket watch from his inner coat. "Four hours sleep. I've survived on less."

"Is there anything I can get you from your apartment?" Bossuet asked from the doorway. Combeferre shook his head.

"From what I can tell, you've crisscrossed Paris tonight, my friend. I suggest you go home." He scrubbed his hand against his face. He'd drop in early and change his clothes tomorrow morning.

A last troubled look at his friend, and he went to the airing cupboard to find a spare blanket. He knew his way around the apartment, having often slept on the spare mattress when working late with Enjolras.

Something occurred to him as he picked up a candlestick to take into the study. "You mentioned someone else was on the scene?"

"A man, well dressed." Bossuet provided, putting his coat on. "Graf Ambrus Skep, I think he said his name was."

Combeferre's eyebrows shot up. "A Hungarian count?" he asked incredulously. "What is a nobleman doing in the backstreets?"

"I don't know." Bahorel frowned. "But I'll be sure to ask him again if he returns."

Retiring to the study, Combeferre removed his outer clothes and lay down. He closed his eyes and there, suddenly, was the memory that had eluded him earlier. He knew what the wound looked like. As a child, he had seen a farmworker's young son, walking barefoot through the fields, bitten by an adder. The boy's father had tied a tourniquet to the wound, cut it with a knife, and then attempted to suck the poison out. The boy had survived. The bruising around the wound had been the same as on Enjolras' neck.

*************

Orssich admitted himself into the courtyard of the hôtel in Faubourg Saint Germain through the elaborate wrought iron gates. The human retainer – Orssich did not know any of their names – who was on watch at the gatehouse kept his head respectfully inclined down as he passed. The dogs – more wolves than housedogs – bounded up in their pack, dropping their heads as well, adopting a subservient position. He caressed the alpha male as he passed.

A living man might have found the building magnificent in its exterior and proportions, with its Mansard roof, tall windows and baroque carving, but very cold and uncomfortable in its interiors. The ivy and clinging plants grew up over the pale stone that had been originally selected and cut to reflect light but now supported the somewhat dank plant growth. The windows, which once would have thrown light out into the gardens at night from rooms filled with chandeliers and candelabras, were now shuttered save for a few on the upper story. With the exception of a small retinue of servants who cooked their meals over small fires in the kitchen, there was no need to prepare food for their consumption, no procession of supplies for the great house, and a sepulchral coldness lay heavy over all for creatures that required neither warmth nor great quantities of light.

And yet, it was not quite dead. The neglect of the garden was kept in check, the wilderness not much more than was fashionable in the style of the day. There was the sound of music from a distant room. Basic order was kept, although dust drifted through many of the chambers.

They had been here for only two seasons, opening the Hôtel Mazamette up after more than twenty years of neglect. When last they had used its halls, an Emperor had resided over France. They had wandered through Europe, little more than a tribe of aristocratic gypsies, until finally it was safe to return here – at least for a short time.

It had once belonged to the Mazamette family, a line now long extinct – unless one counted the undead Oscar, one of their number.

There were five in all – Oscar Mazamette, Juan-José Moreno, Marfa Koutiloff, and Madame Vep. Orssich knew that Oscar and Juan-José were plying their occupation tonight, charming and thieving, draining the wealth of Paris society, as they drained the blood of members of the underclass. Irma, unless she had gone out again on one of her capricious whims, would be in the music room. The playing sounded more like her than Marfa, who preferred popular songs and sentimental ballads.

She would not be pleased on learning of his impulsive actions in the matter of the student. They did not wish their numbers to increase. As the world became more mechanised and the darkness was banished to ever more obscure corners, it was becoming more difficult for them to adapt to the shadows. They had been forced into this life, their noble priviledges usurped or limited, the ancient titles they bore scrutinised in such a way that lead to their potential exposure, and the advances in printing and news distribution obligating them to exist in a more circumspect manner.

Once, they had commanded remote country estates, dominating a peasantry among which whispered rumours as to their true nature mattered not at all, living well off the wealth of their lands, discreetly enjoying themselves in society, careful only to hide their longevity and agelessness through changes of name, location, and fictional inheritences of titles.

Now they banded together in a small coven, reduced to stealing and crime among the Bourgeoise, and selecting their fodder among the most wretched of the streets, those that no one missed, those who could be discarded. Only occasionally did they dare take a victim more to their taste. Their numbers had dwindled – accidents had taken their toll over the centuries, fire and even execution.

For all that, they had thrived in Paris. The new money of this age of industrialisation and manufacture respected their façade of old wealth, their mixed European titles. And the tenements were filled with men, women and children whose loss would never be questioned if they were discreetly killed.

And now…Enjolras. So very lovely. So very intense. He discarded his evening coat, sleeves muddy where he had helped carry his new victim, replacing it with another in a pale satin. He smiled a moment, imagining his plaything in richer attire, completely subservient to his will. A newly risen revenant was weaker than its kin, a slave to their will until with passing years they might grow stronger. Although seniority was not the sole determinative – the ferocious will and hunger of some vampires rendered them more powerful than their kin. Newly ushered into their ranks, Enjolras would be a shadow of his seducers.

First, though, there was Irma. She would not have been pleased had he arrived like a cat bringing his latest kill for her approval. She would have disposed of Enjolras there and then, only later considering whether he might have his charms as a companion. There was potential practical use to made of him as well,as a contempory Parisian. He thoughtfully developed this line of argument. They were, all of them, men and women who should rightfully have been tomb dust for centuries. However gloriously fashionable they might be, it was hard not to eliminate all the archaisms from their dress and manner. Enjolras would be useful as a conduit to the current era, rather than merely decorative.

The music room was on the same floor, and he could hear the light notes of _L'apothéose de Lully_ on the harpsichord. Irma had been trained in many accomplishments in her past life as a marriageble noblewoman.

Her hand was poised over the keys when he entered, looking a very pretty picture, as he had no doubt was her intent. She was extraordinarily vain – possibly even more than he himself was – and liked to strike these small poses that showed her to best advantage. Marfa reclined on a chaise, and he was amused to note that she was reading one of those plainly bound erotic novels. It was evidently engrossing, as she merely smiled at him and returned to reading. She never tired of reading salacious tales, and had a streak of sadism that amused her cohorts.

"My dear," he said to Irma, who resumed playing. She smiled at him and then returned her eyes to the music sheet.

"You've fed well – I can tell. There's something about the shade of your lips when you've drunk a good fill. Did he provide you with the entertainment you anticipated?"

He drew up a chair, one of those flimsy, ornately gilted things so popular from the last century. This room, like the entire building, was a showcase of past glories.

"Very much so. I haven't touched a mind like his in an age. He resisted, you know." He touched his canine briefly. It had healed almost as soon as the injury had occurred, the roots knitting back and the gums closing over, but the memory was vivid.

"Oh?" she she said, returning to her music. "I thought he seemed strong-willed. He must have been delightful to kill…what was that line I liked in that English play? 'Put out the light, and then put out the light.'"

"I did not extinguish him." He admitted. Irma stopped playing. Marfa looked up from her book.

"You let him live?" Irma asked, turning to face him, her expression cold. "He is not a pretty streetwalker to slowly kill, Ambrus, one lost in the abasedof the city. He is a rather handsome, rather noticeable student – he will have family, and he certainly has friends around him. Enjoy the game if you must, but if you draw out his death there is a greater chance of someone deciding that it is unnatural. They may try to intervene."

"A few days only. I know where he lives and have gained admission. He is engaged in subversive activities – they will look to his associations there for a cause for the attack before they think of anything unnatural. And I do not merely wish to kill him."

She divined his purpose in an instant.

"You wish to make him one of us, don't you?" He nodded.

"Think of it, Irma." He knew to appeal to her love of beauty before more rational arguments. "He would be blazingly lovely in immortal robes, an angel of darkness. And you know we need to adapt…enslaved to us, he could be our link to this generation, this emerging world of inventions and discoveries and changing political currents."

"Do you think you could even subvert him to our will?" Marfa asked curiously. "You know he must accept the dark blessing, Ambrus – he must choose this himself. And it seems to me from what you say that he is unusually strong minded."

"That is why he must die slowly. He will be drawn so deeply into the darkness of a dreamworld that he will grasp my hand as if I were his saviour, there to bring him back to sanity." He could see it so clearly, the exact steps that would be taken to subvert Enjolras' will. Trapped amidst confusing shadows, he would turn to Orssich as the one clear thing left in the world, the only discernable shape in a dissolving, bleak landscape.

"And do you propose to bring him here? Shall we lock him up like a princess in a tower as you gradually drain his life?" Irma asked coldly. Marfa smiled as if she rather liked the idea. Orssich's expression darkened – he did not intend to share this conquest.

"No – I can enter his rooms as I please now. I see no need to remove him from where he is…I shall be his incubus."

"And the distress of his friends will please you, will it not? I think that is the real reason you wish to draw this out." Irma observed. He smiled.

"In all my centuries, Irma, I have found no greater pleasure than that to be had in constructing an artful death. His will be magnificent. His friends will be both audience and actors." As he spoke, he could see it. This would be a masterpiece – and at the end of it was a very attractive reward.

*************

Joly woke when Bahorel left at daybreak, the latter promising to return later in the day and to find Feuilly to let him know what had happened. Returning to Enjolras' bedside he oberved in the white dawn that illuminated the room that the sleeper seemed to be stirring, his eyes moving behind the lids, his inhalations deeper.

"Enjolras?" he murmered, giving his shoulder a gentle shake. But Enjolras slipped back under, subsiding to stillness again. Joly straightened and frowned, checking his friend's pulse. It seemed stronger. He dipped his fingers in the mug of water by the bed and flicked it on Enjolras's face, but he did not flinch.

Combeferre entered, finger combing his hair into place. Joly knew the look – his friend often ran his fingers through his hair when he was deep in thought, not realising that he was giving himself the tousled look so beloved of a romantic earlier generation. What was affectation in others was natural to Combeferre.

"Not awake then, eh?" He asked.

"No…he seemed about to come around, but he's gone back under again. Do you think perhaps he's just worked himself to exhaustion, and now his body is catching up on lost sleep? Or that perhaps he was ill before this took place?"

"I detected no sign of illness or exhaustion, and I saw him several times last week. He would never have agreed to the theatre last night if he was overwhelmed with work." Combeferre responded. "He mentioned to me just yesterday that over the summer he intends to visit the Mutualists in Angers, so he had the time and inclination to plan travel."

"If he doesn't awake by this afternoon, we'll have to call in someone with more experience. I have great respect for your abilties, Combeferre, but I'm afraid this might be beyond us, and I don't want to take responsibility for it. I'm concerned there might be an underlying issue – although the only real symptom of anything besides the injury is the pupil dilation. Could he have been aneamic before this happened? He is quite pale, you know, and doesn't seem to enjoy his food much. Perhaps he has not been eating as well as he should."

"No…"Combeferre said. "It's not that he doesn't enjoy his food, it is simply that he regards it as a means to sustain himself, not as an end in itself. His table is spare, but it seems to be adequate to his he is naturally fair complexioned – he has his mother's colouring."

"I'd try bleeding him – it might help his circulation and act as a stimulant - but without knowing how much blood he's already lost it would be difficult to monitor what we took from him."

"Yes" agreed Combeferre. "I'd prefer to leave that to an experienced phycisian."

There was a knocking at the door, and Combeferre opened it to admit Courfeyrac, looking bleary eyed. He had changed his clothes, but faint smell of alcohol and tobacco lingered about him. He had evidently walked from the Rue de la Verrerie at first light.

"I came to see if you needed anything," he explained, following Combeferre into the bedroom. "Enjolras still not awake? Is this the same man who bewails all the hours we lose in sleep? What's wrong?"

"An injury on his neck, blood loss." Joly explained.

"Was he hit in the head? Is that why he does not wake?"

"No, he seems uninjured except for the…" what was it? Knife wound? Bite?

"Would a bucket of water help?"

"It might, if you stuck your head in it. He's going to be alright, Courfeyrac – but we'll call someone in if we need to do so."

Courfeyrac seemed inclined to feel remorseful. "I shouldn't have insisted on the theatre last night."

Combeferre put a hand on his shoulder. "Don't feel any responsibility for that part of it. He was attacked in the Faubourg Saint-Marcel. We do not know why he went where he did – it had nothing to do with you. I do wish, though, that if you must drag him with you to the theatre, you could choose something that would be more to his taste. Try a good history play next time, perhaps with the odd battle in it. Or a tragedy with some splendid patriotic imagery. Not a comedy of manners."

"I thought he might enjoy it."

"No, you didn't. You thought it would be amusing to take him." Courfeyrac looked crestfallen, and Combeferre relented. "I know you wish all your friends to partake of your pleasures, and we often do. But you know it's not a a pretense with him – he sincerely does not appreciate such pastimes, and it is not fair to take advantage of his efforts to try to enjoy them to please you."

"To be fair, though, it's not often he makes those efforts." Courfeyrac responded. "One has to take advantage of them when one can. What can I do to help?"

Combeferre looked around the bedroom. "I need to leave now, but help Joly try to put some order into his books and papers. If we have to call in a doctor, I don't want them seeing some of this material. Put anything suspect in his chest of drawers." Courfeyrac nodded eagerly, and picked up a pile of newspaper clippings from the floor.

"You can reach me at the hospital if you need me," Combeferre told Joly, who was already putting back books on the shelves in the sitting room. "Send Courfeyrac. You might as well make use of his passing impulse to redeem himself." He glanced up at the title Joly was replacing,_ Esprit de la Révolution et de la Constitution de France_, which sat alongside _Organt au Vatican._ The first time he had seen the latter among Enjolras' books he had raised his eyebrows. Enjolras had told him that he was merely a completionist, which was why he had purchased the book. Then he had smiled one of his slow, charming smiles.

"I hope you wake soon, my friend." Combeferre thought sadly as he let himself out.


	4. Chapter 4 A Room Filled With Light

**A/N** - There are a few scattered references to contemporary events through this story, but don't take them as gospel - Sambuc and Chappare were arrested in 1831, for example, but I don't know if they'd been apprehended by the time this story takes place in late May.

Thank you again to the reviewers, and thanks as always to TheHighestPie for the beta work she did on this (and for some of her side notes and observations, which have kept me in stitches). There's some Feuilly to be found here, but if you really want to read a good characterisation of him, Have a look at MmeBahorel's _Corner of the Sky_ and some of her one-shots here on FFN. Period and character perfect!

**

* * *

****Chapter 4 - A Room Filled With Light**

_**What! is it in our eighteenth century that vampires exist? Is it after the reigns of Locke, Shaftesbury, Trenchard, and Collins? Is it under those of d'Alembert, Diderot, St. Lambert, and Duclos that we believe in vampires, and that the reverend father Dom Calmet, Benedictine priest of the congregation of St. Vannes, and St. Hidulphe, abbé of Senon—an abbey of a hundred thousand livres a year, in the neighborhood of two other abbeys of the same revenue—has printed and reprinted the history of **__**vampires, with the approbation of the Sorbonne?**_

- Voltaire, _Dictionaire Philosophique, 1764_

* * *

Enjolras had become steadily more restless through the morning. When the sun was at its height and shone in bars of light through the slats of the shutters, he awoke with a gasp and started upright.

"Lamia!" he cried out.

Joly, who had been watching, put his hands on Enjolras' shoulders and made what he hoped were reassuring sounds. It was hard to exercise a consoling manner when Enjolras, his hair catching stray glints of light and flying out in an aureole of tangled disarray, was gazing at him – or rather past him - with wild, bloodshot eyes. His pupils were still unnaturally dilated, almost black, and his expression without recognition. He gave a few panting breaths, and then began to speak rapidly and urgently in Greek. Joly, trying to calm him, caught only a few words here and there. Something about owls, he thought. And blood.

Combeferre, who had been reading in the study, heard the commotion and entered the room, taking his station at the other side of the bed. Enjolras shied from his touch as well. Just as Joly wondered what they were to do to calm him, the pupils of Enjolras' eyes suddenly reacted to the light, the blue irises coming into evidence as the black contracted. The rapid patter of his voice trailed away until finally the disjointed rambling broke off completely, perhaps in response to Joly's reassurances, his repeated "it's all right…it's over, you are in your own bed, you are safe". He still flinched when Combeferre put a hand on his shoulder to gently push him back into the pillows, but then appeared to become fully aware.

"Combeferre? Joly? The – it was a dream?" His hand flew to his neck, and he frowned when he touched the bandage.

"You were attacked last night on your way back from the theatre," Combeferre told him. It was usually unwise to be anything other than completely direct with Enjolras. "You've sustained a slight injury to the neck, but nothing else." Combeferre tried to smile. "They didn't even rifle your pockets, it seems. You still have your watch."

Enjolras looked at him blankly. "I have no memory of this."

"Do you remember leaving the Comédie-Française?" Combeferre asked, moving the bandages to check the wound. Still no sign of infection and Enjolras, despite the agitation he had shown in sleep and disorientation on waking, did not seem to have a fever. If anything, he was cool to the touch.

"I remember – at the play. Courfeyrac, Bahorel and Bossuet…loud but not unpleasant. And then, nothing."

"Perhaps you merely fell asleep in the theatre?" Joly asked brightly, to counter the sombre mood of his friend.

"No…there were silver eyes, there and later, in the dark."

"In the alley?" Combeferre asked. Enjolras seemed confused, his usual precision entirely lacking.

"I know nothing of an alley." He said, and they caught the underlying anxiety in Enjolras' voice. "Only …darkness."

"Bahorel and Bossuet found you and brought you here," Combeferre explained.

"Were they injured too?" Enjolras asked. "Are they safe? Has anyone else…was it a politically motivated attack? What…" he held his hands to his temples and closed his eyes.

"Enjolras." Combeferre laid a calming hand on his shoulder. "Do not distress yourself. No one else was harmed – we think it was a simple robbery gone wrong." He tried to smile. "You probably put your assailants to flight before they could take anything from you.

"Then why do I not remember?" Enjolras asked, eyes wide, his look half angry.

"We don't know. Did you by any chance have anything to eat or drink before you met us at the Café before the theatre? Anything that might have tasted bitter or unusual?"

Being able to recall this seemed to make Enjolras calmer. "I had a meal at midday, or somewhat after – bread, cheese. Some water. But I had eaten the same the previous evening, and had no ill effects then. Do you think it was drugged? I don't see how that could be – I purchased the food the day before, and it was sitting in my own cupboard."

"It was just a thought. How do you feel now?" Joly asked.

"I am fine," Enjolras said automatically. Combeferre smiled coaxingly at him.

"Enjolras, we speak now as your physicians rather than your friends. Give us an honest account."

Enjolras nodded grudgingly. "I feel tired. Weak." The admission was clearly distasteful to him. "Also, rather cold."

"Your limbs do seem chilled" Combeferre agreed, taking his pulse. "And your heartbeat is still too rapid."

"You haven't made a report to the police?" Enjolras asked, altering the subject. They shook their heads. "Good. I suppose all the Amis should know, but I suggest it go no further."

_Of course_, thought Joly. _No weakness – no frailty_.

"Are you quite sure there is nothing you remember?" Combeferre probed gently. "If there is any indication of whom your assailant was, I'm sure that Bahorel…"

"Nothing," Enjolras said with an air not just of finality, but almost urgency. It was clear he wanted the incident disposed of as quickly and quietly as possible. "When shall I be out of bed?"

Ah, thought Joly. Here it comes. Like as not he'll insist on taking himself to the Musain tonight. "Perhaps it might be as well to stay in bed for now," Joly said aloud. Another night's sleep and I'm certain you'll be up again. Your neck seems all right, but we'll keep fresh dressings on it."

To his surprise, Enjolras merely nodded – quiescent, even lethargic.

"Could you please open the shutters?" he asked.

"Are you sure the sunlight will not be too bright?" Enjolras shook his head. Joly opened them and the light streamed onto Enjolras' head. Joly had a stray thought, a reminder of the stained glass figure of the Archangel Michael in the church of his childhood, and how its colours had glowed as sunlight illuminated it.

Enjolras usually paid little heed to weather and the elements - wind, rain or sunlight being all of a uniform indifference to him – but now he turned his face into the light that fell across him, closing his eyes again, faintly smiling.

"I'm let Joly go now," Combeferre said, "he's been here most of the night and morning. I have my books, so I'll keep you company. Can I fetch you anything?"

"You might bring me the notes I was working on…yesterday, was it? Some figures on penal sentences I was collating. They should be…somewhere in my study. Perhaps atop the pile nearest the left hand side of the desk."

"That wasn't what I had in mind – I was thinking more along the lines of food or water. Perhaps you should be resting and not straining your eyes."

"Water, yes. And I think it would be better to work," Enjolras replied softly, but with his unmistakable authority. "If I'm to be abed, I would turn it to some use. I have promised Caunes I would have my suggestions and notes to him in time for his response to Thiery - I would be grateful if you would get my papers on the subject. And pardon my manners – I must thank you both for all you have done. And Bossuet and Bahorel, if you see them before I do." He half opened his eyes, but did not turn his face away from the light coming in the window.

Joly assisted Combeferre in searching for the notes before taking his leave. "This is the last time," noted Combeferre, "that I ask Courfeyrac for help in restoring order to anything. Goodness knows where he's put them – not in the drawers, like I instructed."

Joly finally found them, laid across the top of some books on a shelf in the study. The Greek titles of the books reminded him of something. "Did you catch what Enjolras was saying when he woke up? I'm not fluent enough to get it all – were they actual sentences, or was it just nonsense?

Combeferre looked troubled. "I understood some of it. He was reciting from _Metamorphoses_, quoting Antoninus Liberalis on the Striges." He ran his hands over the shelves, finding the volume he was seeking among the classics. Taking it down, he located the right passage, and began to read. "_'_Polyphonte became a small owl whose voice is heard at night. She does not eat or drink and keeps her head turned down and the tips of her feet turned up. She is a portent of war and sedition for mankind. Oreios became an eagle owl, a bird that presages little good to anyone when it appears. Argios was changed into a vulture, the bird most detested by gods and men. These gods gave him an utter craving for human flesh and blood.'"

* * *

Courfeyrac had spent a productive afternoon, by his lights.

"Go to the Musain and see if anyone is there – and use your discretion as to whom to inform about the events of last night." That had been the extent of Combeferre's instructions to him when he'd returned from his morning at the Necker Hospital.

Courfeyrac, however, thought he could do rather better than that. He wandered over to the Café Momus, fobbing off friends he ran into with a smile and a joke, and seating himself in the sun he ordered a coffee, bread and preserves from Nicolette. She had a very pretty silk ribbon in her hair today, he noticed, although that ridiculous topknot style didn't suit her – she didn't have enough tresses on top, and needed hair rats to fill out her own. He told her the ribbon became her, and forbore mentioning the knot of hair. She tripped off happily, and he spread the contents of his purse on the table.

Well. The coins amounted to about three francs, to last until the end of the week, three days away, when he could draw on his allowance. He'd all but exhausted his funds at the theatre and dinner last night, not to mention the money put towards getting Lesgle and Joly back to the Quartier.

One franc he would give to Aimée, his more-or-less current mistress. Although she hadn't asked for money, she'd mentioned how short of funds she was, with the rent due. She'd kept him company several times the past few weeks, so it seemed only fair he should give her some assistance. Some money for her landlady and some for herself. A girl like that needed to be kept in ribbons and nosegays. He fished out a franc from the pile, putting it in his coat pocket so he wouldn't forget and spend it.

Two francs would probably hold him. He'd settled most of his accounts at the various cafes and restaurants last week, so his credit was reasonable, for once. He'd cancel his engagement to meet with some of his barrister friends tonight at Flicoteau's restaurant. Until he knew what was happening with Enjolras, it might be better to stay in easy reach of Combeferre and Joly anyway.

He scratched his nose thoughtful at the recollection of the latter's cool, efficient care of their mutual friend – he'd seemed all business, and it was something of a revelation to see him in his role of doctoring someone other than himself.

Courfeyrac grinned with a sudden happy thought. Enjolras' bed had been moved way from the wall, had it not? He'd become familiar with the room set up through carrying in cartridges and bullet moulds to store under his friend's bed, and he knew that it was usually pushed against the wall. Joly was behind the rearrangement, he'd wager – and this was too good an opportunity to miss. He'd have to remember to ask with just the right tone of solemnity whether the lines of magnetism were set up for healing neck wounds – and whether the cartridges might not establish a field to interfere with the process. The joke could even be improved if he had a chance to look up that book by Mesmer that was floating around his rooms somewhere before he ran into Joly again. He'd refresh his memory on the right aspects of mesmerism he could tweak his friend over.

But back to the question of funds. The contents of his pockets should be sufficient that he wouldn't need to call on any of his friends for a loan. He tried to recall who owed him money, but he never kept track of such things. Meanness with money was one of the few truly unforgivable sins in the world.

Now, as to Enjolras. Courfeyrac had been hunted out of his friend's rooms by Combeferre, but vowed to return that evening. And what would be Enjolras's first thought on waking? News. Information. His mental workings reminded Courfeyrac sometimes of a sort of sensitive instrument, like that Chinese earthquake detector Combeferre had shown him once in the Institut de France. He had been intrigued by how infinitesimally small tremours caused a swinging pendulum to knock a ball from a dragon's head into the waiting open mouth of a toad, thus indicating that the earth itself had shaken, though a man felt it not, and that the movement might be a precursor to a giant upheaval.

Or a spider – that was it. A rather gorgeous and golden one, but a spider of sensitivity, waiting for the vibrations in his web. A brawl in the tannery caused by wage discontent, a murmur about the rising cost of salt, an article on the health of an Assembly member. Enjolras collected them all, arranged them in that curious, systematic mind, and drew his conclusions and connections from them, extrapolating opportunities and defining obstacles. It never ceased to fascinate Courfeyrac that a mind so engaged with the lofty and symbolic could at the same time be so in tune with the practical currents of popular thought. He had his eye fixed on the distant, Arcadian temples of Republicanism and a high horizon, but his finger always had a firm metaphorical grip on the trigger of the rifle he had obtained from a discontented jeweller angry at the rise in his cost of living, and his feet were grounded in wages, labour conditions, statistics, streams of funding, and of knowing which National Guardsmen might turn if – when – it came again to the barricades, as they had the year before.

Enjolras usually collected the newspapers himself, using the exercise as an opportunity to visit his various haunts, sounding the pulse of his allies and testing his lines of communication. As that was out of the question today, Courfeyrac would undertake to perform the task for him. It would be more appreciated than anything else he could present his friend in his sickbed, and he allowed himself to hope that by the time he called again he'd find Enjolras seated in his comfortable arm chair with its worn upholstery, fighting off the ministrations of Combeferre and Joly.

Unfortunately, the Café Momus only had a copy of the _National_, which he hid under his frock coat, glad he was wearing a dark blue waistcoat that wouldn't show the ink smears. The proprietor was beginning to make pointed comments about the tendencies of students to either commandeer his publications for hours on end so other patrons couldn't read them, or absconding with them altogether. He thought for a moment, plotting out which cafés subscribed to which publications that would be of interest Enjolras, ready for him to comandeer them, and where to pick up any pamphlets that might be of use. The expedition provided a perfectly legitimate excuse to avoid any afternoon lectures, and to fit in the odd game of billiards along the way.

Just outside the door, he gave the change from his breakfast to a ragged girl selling bunches of spring wildflowers that looked almost as tattered as she herself. Her eyes widened at the coins. In spite of her protesting attempts to give him the largest bouquet she had, he accepted the smallest. He'd find someone to give them to along the way – there was never a shortage of waitresses to appreciate little attentions. Though as wilted as they were, he'd have to make sure he didn't truly fancy the girl.

He could call into the Musain on his trawl through the cafés.

* * *

Feuilly left the atelier where he was employed, work box tucked under his arm, planning on spending his evening at the Musain. The waitress told him pleasantly on his arrival that he was the first tonight, knowing him to be one of those who frequented the back room. Taking a seat there, he laid out some old newspapers she gave him and he spread out the ivory sticks of the rather elaborate brisé fan he was working on, an extra commission that M. Depaul, owner of the business, had offered him. He usually painted on silk or paper leaves, but this design called for painting three vignettes directly onto the sticks, which were pierced and carved. Aligning the pictures across the sticks was an exacting task he enjoyed, and as the piece was to be unique he could allow himself free reign with the fanciful landscapes. He chose classical ruins, painting from a design he had worked from the illustrations in one of Enjolras' books.

He had arranged to meet Enjolras at eight, but the clock in the front bar suggested he had over an hour to wait. It did not matter – the light here was better than in his own rooms, he could have a meal of herrings and potato, and there was always the chance that one of his colleagues in the ABC would arrive as well. Enjolras, he knew, would be punctual – he was absolutely a man of his word, even down to small details.

He smiled not to recall a time when he had not thought so well of the man. Contrary to what was sometimes resentfully suggested outside the circle of intimates, not all of Enjolras' lieutenants had immediately fallen under the spell of their acknowledged chief.

Feuilly was one who had resisted his charms. How precisely Enjolras had found him he did not know, although he assumed Bahorel had something to do with it. It was Bahorel who had been with him the night Feuilly had emerged from the atelier where he painted his fans. It had been raining, and he prepared to brush past the two men when Enjolras had put out a hand to stay him.

"M. Feuilly?" he asked, but it was less a question than statement. The red hair, even under the cap, was rather prominent, and he was easily described and identified.

"Yes?" He asked. Enjolras gestured with a black gloved hand, the collar of his great coat up and his hat brim low over his eyes, protecting his face from the rain. Feuilly wrapped his arms around himself – it was cold, and he wished to return home.

"Perhaps we could go somewhere warmer, where we might talk?"

"I do not think so, M'sieur" he responded, shivering. "It would be best if you state your business with me now. Or come back and speak to M. Depaul when the Atelier is open." A special commission, maybe– some ridiculous piece of frippery for his mistress, perhaps an obscene tableau to be revealed with the unfolding of a fan for her to titter at.

Then Enjolras had lifted his head, and even through the dark and rain, Feuilly could see the level, candid gaze of the blue eyes that looked straight into his own, regarding him frankly.

"There are some matters that it is best not to discuss in the streets, Monsieur Feuilly," he said very deliberately, and Feuilly had an inkling what this might be about after all. He knew that students were involved in the agitations, had even seen them at some of the meetings of local societies that were coalescing. It was known that the Latin Quarter housed some of the most vocal opponents to the oppressive Bourbons.

"I have read your pamphlet _Thoughts on Education and the Progress of the People by a Working Man_," Enjolras explained, removing all doubt. "And I wish to put a proposal to you. Your views, I think, are in line with our own."

Feuilly was dismayed – how had he been identified? The pamphlet had been published anonymously; he had not even known the channels by which it had reached the secret press where his associates arranged for it to be printed.

"I…"

"Come!" said Bahorel, speaking for the first time. "Come with us to the Corinth – we can explain it there. And it will be a chance to eat and get out of this foul weather – we can exchange cold and water for the fire of ideas and the smoke of pipes. He laughed heartily and – for all his imposing bulk and rough way of speaking – there was something reassuring and warming in the ringing laughter.

Feuilly allowed himself to be taken to the wineshop, not pausing to think how he was going to pay for the meal, for assuredly he would not let them buy it for him.

And that was how it had begun.

Feuilly had warmed immediately to Combeferre, whose breadth of learning was fascinating, and to Prouvaire, whom, it turned out, was a man of some erudition, and who had even proposed instructing him in Latin. This was fuel to Feuilly's burning need to expand his knowledge and horizons. Here, he thought, were men he could understand, and who understood him. With one exception.

Enjolras he could not admire. The law student could not be authentic, Feuilly reasoned. His well made clothes - oh, so deliberately sober and modest, but quality of the cut and texture spoke of money. His voice, his words, his grace – there were natural qualities there, Feuilly would admit, but they were overlaid by the patina that only money could nurture, and a life of comfort. Not because he affected mannerisms, but because of his unconscious command, the authority of and assumptions of wealth. He was no doubt very acutely aware of not bearing himself ostentatiously, neither in dress nor manner. But even that was part of what Feuilly had sourly heard Depaul refer to in some of his customers as "good breeding."

It was not envy, Feuilly was confident. Jealousy was a dirty little vice. He liked the other students – even Courfeyrac, who sometimes behaved as Enjolras never did, as if he were forgetful that he was an aspiring revolutionary with dreams of equality and liberty and instead choosing to conduct himself as if he were a young buck about town, flourishing his fashionable clothes and his girls. They had been friendly, respectful of his hard earned knowledge. As, he acknowledged, Enjolras had been.

But in Enjolras he thought he felt the inauthentic. Could any man so truly be the personification of _Vertu_? He was too clever, too passionate – he would burn both out before many more years. Who could maintain that much fervour but youth - a man in the first flush of political awareness, who had been sheltered for most of his life from the raw poverty that now shouldered him as he walked through the streets?

And did he really care about the social situation, or was he consumed with dreams of '89 and the dramatic events of the revolution, like a schoolboy enthralled with tales of Charlemagne or the Crusades? For when he spoke at all, he spoke as fluently of the Bastille and the course of the Convention as he did of workers' wages and the oppression of the press. These considerations had their place, but Feuilly – struggling daily against the indifference of a world where the rising cost of necessities outstripped his static wage, and where international crimes were validated by the nations on a grand scale – was rather weary of the breed of young Republicans who were more interested in talking about Robespierre in the airiest and broadest of rhetoric than in discussing events that were happening even then in Poland and Greece.

Watching Enjolras in his customary corner of the Musain, quiet as the arguments and passionate discourse unfolded around him, Feuilly felt vaguely resentful. "Does he imagine himself as Saint-Just in the Assembly?" he wondered. "Cultivating that mysterious silence? That classical pose? Building his cult of admirers?" He stayed with the ABC largely because of the others. Enjolras spoke to him often, and he responded politely but briefly. It seemed Enjolras was completely unaware of the emotions he inspired in Feuilly, as oblivious to them as to the admiration of the others. It fuelled his…resentment was too strong a word. His wariness. His distrust.

And then had come the day of the speech - a landmark in their association. There had been others there, the satellites who sometimes came into the orbit of the ABC's leaders, and the room had been filled. Many students, some workers. Supposedly spontaneously – although Feuilly had had his doubts - Enjolras, inspired, had climbed atop a chair to deliver one of his addresses. That rich voice had brought many to their feet. More passionate and persuasive revolutionary oratory, drawing on the imagery of '89. Feuilly had been in his corner, scratching out a satirical cartoon of Villèle blacking the king's boots that he was preparing for a pamphlet, pondering how to render the ugliness of their features to mirror the ugliness of their ideas and still make them recognisable. Although Enjolras' voice rang over all, interrupted only by cheers and affirmations from his enthralled audience, he had not been listening until he heard his name.

"Citizens, where are we to look to the future but in our working men? Is there any better resource or any higher hope in the world? And what could be grander than he who lifts himself through self-education and civic duty? And as the individual does so, so shall the nation. Take my friend, Feuilly – he earns perhaps a mere two or three francs a day, but he is the exemplar of a truly learned man. And he fights for his knowledge, he is tempered by his experiences, he is a sword of the people…"

Feuilly froze in anger. What right had Enjolras to take this liberty? To hold him up as some sort of example as he might speak of a character in his beloved _Candide_, or one of the old _Conventionnels_! What was he to Enjolras – an abstract idea, a symbol for rabble rousing rhetoric?

He rose to his feet and elbowed his way to the door. Combeferre, standing just outside, detained him with a hand on his arm as he passed. The student did not need to ask what the matter was.

"You are offended – Feuilly, I apologise."

"It is not you who should apologise, Combeferre, for it is not you who have given the insult."

"He does not mean to do so. Truly – when he is speaking, he sees a grand vista laid out before him, and all experiences, all his learning, individuals and even his friends are elements to be fashioned into ideas…"

"He does not see people at all. He sees glorious images and symbols in their place – his people are no more real than those fanciful figures I draw when I am earning my …mere two or three francs." He did not mean to spit out the last words, but it was difficult.

"He respects you, Feuilly – it's just that sometimes…"

"My friend, I know you act as an interpreter for him. I admire you for it. But I did not join this society to worship a golden calf." He tossed his head angrily towards where Enjolras held his audience enraptured, thought briefly of saying more, but then left.

He was sorry for the exchange. Combeferre had not deserved to be the target. Perhaps he would seek him out separately from the group, explain in other terms why he could not serve under Enjolras. If he could even frame what those terms were. His parting shot had been unworthy of him.

A few days later, soon after sitting to dine in a workingman's café, he had been abruptly woken from his thoughts by a pair of long, pale, elegant hands that settled on the table in front him. A voice, beautifully modulated but having a force that, at its fullest, he knew could render it harsh, asked, "might I sit down with you?"

"Of course, Citizen," he responded formally. No use in asking how he had been tracked here. Enjolras cultivated many contacts. He watched Enjolras draw out the chair with that damnable grace, as unconcerned, as always, with the stares he was attracting. Could he really be so unaware, or was it a lifetime of pretending he didn't notice the slight wake of silence when he passed, or the murmur of voices, the rills of laugher from the girls?

"Combeferre has told me I offended you the other day in the Musain." Enjolras said without preliminaries, and again Feuilly found himself under the regard of those blue eyes. It could be disconcerting in the extreme to be the subject of their focus. "I offer you my unreserved apologies – I should not have mentioned your personal circumstances."

"No, you should not have." Feuilly agreed. Whatever his charm of manner, Feuilly would not be won.

"Combeferre tells me that I was wrong to use you in that way as a symbol of what we hope for in the education of the people – that it demeaned you, creating a difference between you and the others in our circle, suggesting that your primary value to the ABC was as allegory rather than as a man."

Feuilly was surprised by the admission, and even more so when Enjolras dropped his eyes to his hands.

"I admit, Feuilly, that I do sometimes fall into this way of seeing our friends. I draw my inspiration from them – when I see Combeferre, I see the march of scientific progress, pushing back the darkness of ignorance. In Courfeyrac I see the warmth of humanity – its embracing generosity of spirit. Prouvaire is its tender side, still seeing something of the apocalyptic and melancholic grandeur of the revolution. Oh, in all of those close to us I see another dimension to existence, something beyond the immediate. I grope to express this – sometimes my ideas are hard to put into words, and I reach for symbols that come to hand, to clothe what cannot be easily expressed."

Then he looked at Feuilly with all the burning intensity of which he was capable. And the fan maker knew that this was absolute sincerity – it was not a posture, not a gesture. It was absolute, pure conviction.

He had never encountered it untainted and in its most essential form, and perhaps that was why he had not recognised it immediately.

"And I admire you, Feuilly. Not because you are a working man who has reached for the future, and not because you are a convenient emblem for our aspirations. Not only for these, though they are part of what matters. But for whom you are."

"But you always speak of other human beings in the abstract," Feuilly explained, trying to reach this distant figure. "We are human, too – and people are not merely pasteboard masks in which to clothe abstract principles, and life is not a series of gestures."

Enjolras nodded, and touched his shoulder.

"I know, Feuilly. And I expect you to remind me of this from time to time."

With his other hand he brushed a lock of hair from out of his eyes, and with that gesture – small, impatient, graceless, Feuilly realised that Enjolras was not merely a machine of revolution after all.

From that point, their friendship had progressed. Enjolras was never so crude as to offer him money – he suspected Combeferre had long since pointed out that this was an insulting gesture for one of Feuilly's temperament – but he had offered him access to his books. For all he seemed like the manifestation of some warrior divinity, he was surprisingly scholarly, even if his reading, though deep, was narrower than that of some of his friends. Greek and Latin, some philosophical thought (he was startled to come across a volume by Swedenborg on Enjolras' shelves, although he could detect only a faint trace of the man's ideas in those of his friend) , a vast and sometimes colourful array of histories and memoires of the Revolution, and the latest treatises on tactics and warfare.

They often spoke until late into the evenings in Enjolras' corner of the café – and most often it was he, Feuilly, who did the speaking, Enjolras regarding him with attention while he declaimed on the subjects that drew his passion, be they education or the liberation of oppressed peoples around the world. Feuilly knew the former concerned Enjolras, but he never knew if he listened to the latter from politeness. He could rarely be drawn on the subject of subjugated nations, save to agree that they were in need of liberation from the shackles of tyranny. Which wasn't very specific, so Feuilly thought. But he had come to accept that, too, in his friend. "You embrace all peoples as your family, don't you?" Enjolras had asked once at the conclusion of a particularly spirited discourse from Feuilly on Poland's May Constitution of 1790. Feuilly agreed, although that had not really been the thrust of his argument, and he waited to see if Enjolras would comment further. He did not, but instead seemed to lapse into reverie, still regarding Feuilly thoughtfully. And that was how it often went.

Feuilly had met the previous evening with friends in the _Association libre pour l'Education du Peuple_, and had sounded them out on legal matters. There was word of impending arrests for seditious publications, and it seemed some of the targets would be students. Feuilly knew that Enjolras did not think very highly of the rhetoric or tactics of some of his peers who had come under investigation since the spate of leaflets late last year. The ABC was perhaps not the epitome of discipline (and with members such a Bossuet and Joly, with their readiness for a drink and a laugh – not to mention satellites such as Grantaire – he suspected it never would be), but some of the students under investigation like Jules Sambuc and Pierre-Louis Chappare were crude blunderers by comparison who could bring suspicion and scrutiny down on them all.

He also had news from the shoproom floors, the rumour and counter-rumour of protest and newly formed and shadowy societies that might prove allies, or otherwise. Enjolras would see the connections, and he was impatient to discuss the new information. He hoped, too, that Prouvaire – who was surprisingly sound on such matters – might call in.

It was not Enjolras, though, but Courfeyrac who arrived at eight. Courfeyrac smiled and clapped his back in greeting as he sat down. "You'll get paint in your herrings. Usually it's in your hair." Feuilly nodded, and put his paints down, pushing his near empty plate away.

"It would improve the taste," said Feuilly mildly. "Where have you been prowling about today?"

"I've visited half the cafés in town," his friend responded conversationally. "Had a good game of billiards at the Voltaire."

"And collecting newspapers and pamphlets, I see." Said Feuilly, pointing to the stack of documents his friend had thrown on the table in front of him. "Are you starting a travelling library?"

"No, that would require keeping track of who borrows and who returns." He laughed. "It's a dirty business, this news vending - my fingers are black as an imp in a coal mine." He held them up. They were indeed dark. "And I'm in need of refreshment. Marietta?" he asked the waitress who had followed him in. She left to fetch the red wine that he favoured. "Have you spoken with Bahorel or Bossuet today? They were looking for you."

"No – I've been working. You students are prone to forget that some of us do that." he replied without rancour, "and you're the first in tonight."

"Well, I doubt we'll be meeting. You haven't heard about Enjolras, I take it?"

"No," Feuilly asked, concerned. "What of him?"

"Attacked, last night – still out cold when I last saw him." Courfeyrac began the tale without preliminaries.

"Monstrous!" Feuilly said, angrily, when he had finished, hotly angry at the unknown hands roughly placed on one of his friends.

"You haven't seen Grantaire since we were last at the Corinth, I suppose?" Courfeyrac asked. Feuilly shook his head. "Good. Then I can avoid telling him for now. I am frankly too fatigued to listen to his theories on how statues can bruise. And his concern would be still more grating." He took a swig of his wine. "That's better – I've been nursing a sore head all day. This red shall act as a corrective, as I was drinking a white wine last night. I'm sure that works out on a principal of balance. Quite seriously, though, Grantaire will probably be unbearable when he finds out."

"I might walk over to Enjolras' rooms now," Feuilly said, gathering up his things. He'd have to ask Louison to lock up the pieces that were yet to dry – the dishwasher was kind about these little matters. The rest he wrapped in tissue paper and put in their box. "I'll take the newspapers for you, if they're for Enjolras."

"No, I might drop around myself with you. See if he's up and about yet. I want to see if he's rounded on Joly yet for rearranging his furniture. Just let's finish this carafe."

* * *

"That's odd." Feuilly commented as they turned in at the end of the street.

"What is?"

"Those windows that are ablaze with light…those are Enjolras's rooms." Courfeyrac saw that Feuilly was correct – Enjolras's bedroom windows poured light into the street, leaving bright squares of light on the cobblestones. No silhouettes passed before them, though, no indication of movement. For a moment Courfeyrac felt concern.

"Combeferre probably lost his spectacles. Or Joly has dropped a magnet." He said lightly. "And good luck to them finding either among all those books and papers."

They knocked at the door, and Combeferre admitted them. "He's awake," Combeferre murmured to them. "Seems alright." Courfeyrac detected hesitation. "But don't try to draw him out on what happened last night." Here he fixed Courfeyrac with a keen grey eye. "He doesn't remember, and it is causing him some agitation."

Courfeyrac thought for a passing moment about what delight there was to be had in agitating Enjolras – he often expended his energies in that direction, and was sometimes, when extremely persistent or touching upon just the right trigger, rewarded with that rather splendid anger – but he supposed that in light of what had happened he could hold off for at least the evening. He still felt some vague, lingering guilt over the previous night, and hoped he wasn't developing a conscience regarding his friends. That would be terribly dull.

"Why all the light?" Feuilly asked, surprised, at the door to Enjolras' room. There were wax candles in all the wall sconces and lamps on both the chest of drawers and the bedside table.

"Enjolras requested that I bring in more candles." Combeferre said shortly. Something was bothering him, Courfeyrac realised. "And the lamps."

Some comment about being afraid of the dark rose to Courfeyrac's lips, but catching sight of Enjolras – pale against the pillows on which he was propped – made him bite off the remark. Instead, he gave one of his brightest smiles – and they were usually accounted to be dazzling.

"Well, it seems the spirit of the revolution is incapacitated for a day or two, then, Enjolras," he said with a flourish. Enjolras regarded him coolly.

"As I am not the embodiment of the revolution, my momentary indisposal will not present an insurmountable obstacle." Then he smiled in return, to show that he was not in earnest. "It is good of you both to call. Truly - this is a trifling matter."

A trifling matter that kept you unconscious for the better part of a day, Courfeyrac thought, but did not say it. It would be more cause for concern if Enjolras was not being so stoic about all this.

"We bring you homage, oh priest of the ideal," Courfeyrac said, flourishing the pile of newspapers and pamphlets. "I can extract the Loyalist publications from the pile if you're not of a mind to stomach them yet. And _Le_ _Journal des Débats_ and its ilk, too, if you're feeling particularly queasy."

Enjolras smiled, reached for them and, realising that there was no surface to put them on, placed them in a pile by his bed. "Thank you – you are most considerate." He turned to Feuilly. "So now we have what the press says – is there any news of the spirit in the workshops, Feuilly?" he asked, listening to the fanmaker's answer with all due attention.

Or so it seemed. Courfeyrac couldn't put his finger on it, but there was a false note here somewhere. Probably just Enjolras trying to hide his weakness, Courfeyrac thought, but there was something else to it. Enjolras seemed dampened down; the words he spoke about the issues of the day seemed to come by rote, not from that strange inner fount. Most utterances from Enjolras on such matters, even comparatively simple declarations, seemed to come as if he read them off a tablet in his mind where they were graven in letters of fire or chiselled in marble. He glanced up at Combeferre, who was regarding Enjolras with a concerned expression.

Taking advantage of a break in Feuilly's bright discourse on the latest iniquities of the rising cost of living in the artisan community, Combeferre broke in.

"I'll change your dressing now, Enjolras – let us check the wound."

"Shall we go?" Feuilly asked.

"No – please keep talking," Enjolras said. "It is nothing more than a scratch."

"'Tis not so deep as a well nor so wide as a church door…'" began Courfeyrac, then stopped abruptly. He saw Enjolras' shiver as Combeferre touched his bandages, averting his eyes to look at the lamp on top of the dresser. Courfeyrac thought how ugly the mark on his neck seemed – like an animal bite. It did not ooze, though, and the skin around, while bruised, did not have the angry colour of infection.

Unbidden, he heard a voice from childhood. _"The morning after the funeral, they found the dead man's sweetheart with a wound upon her neck…she sickened and soon died too…They buried her in the churchyard. In weeks, the mysterious sickness had spread to through the village and surrounding countryside, and always the same marks…."_

He frowned. He remembered the voice. It was the cook from his childhood, an elderly peasant woman. Even as a child, Courfeyrac had thoroughly enjoyed the company of women, and often found himself in the kitchen being spoiled by the household staff. This woman had been a font of local tales and local gossip, with a penchant for the macabre. Local village scandal and murders going back generations, quite inappropriate for a child's ears. How had this tale gone? A plague that had swept through her home place, mysterious deaths…wounds on the neck. And…a graveyard. Something about a body gorged with blood. He couldn't quite recall how it went.

"Courfeyrac, could you please press this down while I bind it again?"

The will-'o-the-wisp of memory vanished with the words.

* * *

Enjolras wasn't aware when his friends had left – he must have fallen asleep, he thought. Certainly a period of unawareness had passed, his last recollection that of Courfeyrac reading aloud speech excerpts from the Chamber of Deputies reprinted in the _Moniteur _with such amusing inflections in the voices of the speakers he imitated that Feuilly had been laughing heartily and Combeferre had been offering him advice and encouragement on his delivery, declaring his Polignac a work of genius.

It was quiet now. He had no sense of time, though it was dark outside. Combeferre would be in the study, where he intended to sleep for a night or two. He was thankful that Combeferre had left the lamps burning. He had insisted on them all being alight earlier, and either through forgetfulness or for some other reason, Combeferre had extinguished only the candles.

He felt a faint, sick dizziness, and wondered whether he was truly awake, or if this was still a dream. It was hard to think, hard to move. He felt as if he struggled underwater. He looked at the lamps, knowing they were alight, but their illumination seemed veiled to him.

And then he realised he was on his feet and at the window without quite knowing how he had arrived there. He shook his head, trying to clear it. But the film of unreality was over all. He could hardly feel the cool air on his bare legs, or the cold floorboards at the window through his unshod feet. Compelled by some call he did not understand, he opened the shutters of his window.

A figure stood across the street, a motionless pillar of darkness, with a white face turned up towards his own.

Enjolras felt the edges of his vision dissolving, until there was nothing but a pair of silver eyes that stared into his naked soul.

* * *

Enjolras stood at the window, gazing at him with completely impassive features, his hair a halo backlit in the lamplight's glow. Orssich felt the same pull he had at the theatre, this time enhanced by his knowledge of Enjolras' mind, of the imprinted memory of how the boy had felt in his arms. It would be a simple matter to scale the wall of the building, entering the room, overwhelming his helpless prey. Not even the friend dozing in the next room would hear him. But Enjolras was too weak – he needed time to recover from the first assault. And Orssich, his appetite aroused, did not trust himself to merely taste – he would consume everything in the white lust of hunger when in such proximity to a warm, human body. As his consciousness snaked into Enjolras' mind, he felt his victim shudder. It was a trembling of a trapped bird's wings. Abruptly he withdrew. He would need to find someplace to feed tonight, to sate this thirst. Enjolras turned away from the window, passing a hand across his eyes, confused. Orssich went his way.

He fed in the early hours of the morning. An eight year old child in the faubourg Saint-Jacques, a frail little girl earning a pittance scavaging for turds in the street that could be used in the tanneries on the hides, a miserable, scabbed specimen of humanity with lice in her hair. He drew her into the shadow of a building, and ruthlessly fastened on to her neck, ripping into the artery. She hardly shuddered as he drained her blood quickly and completely, and made no sound but a sigh. He despised the necessity that lead him to mingle such inferior blood with that of his other victim, and flung her aside contemptuously when he had finished.

As her heart pulses faded to stillness, miles away Enjolras woke from troubled dreams with a raw cry.

* * *


	5. Chapter 5 Smothered Illumination

**AN/ Thank you to the reviewers - it's always encouraging when writing something like this to know that someone is reading! The Highest Pie has done superb beta work, as usual (and please - go read her "Eroica" story if you haven't already done so. Superb characterisation of Enjolras). MmeBahorel has also been generous with practical suggestions, drawing on her extensive research of the period (and again - read her fics! They're superb!).**

**If anyone is uneasy with the eroticisation of violence in this chapter, well - that's what I was aiming for, as it's from Orssich's POV. **

* * *

**Chapter 5 - Smothered illumination**

_**There, vested in infernal guise,  
**__**(By means to me not understood,)  
**__**Close to my side the goblin lies,  
**__**And drinks away my vital blood!  
**__**Sucks from my veins the streaming life,  
**__**And drains the fountain of my heart!**_

John Stagg_ The Vampyre, 1812_

* * *

Combeferre watched unhappily as Enjolras shaved with an unsteady hand. His friend's hair was so fair that it would hardly have mattered had he gone a second or third day without removing the light stubble growth on his chin, but he had insisted. Courfeyrac had often teased him with questions about whether he needed to shave at all, suggesting that facial hair would add much needed years and gravitas to their chief's youthful face – "or it would, if you could see proper whiskers instead of that downy fluff."

_Hopefully he won't cut his own throat_, Combeferre thought, _and finish whatever job it was that someone started on him_. He had offered to bring in a barber, but Enjolras had declined. He handed over a towel when the younger man was done – there was only a slight nick on his jaw which, given the tremor in Enjolras' hands, was better than expected.

"I'll accompany you outside on two conditions."

"Name them."

"Firstly, that we do not go any further than the corner café, where you are to eat a meal. A proper meal. Something with a bit of meat. Secondly, you are not to attempt to engage anyone in a discussion involving anything more strenuous than how you just nicked your chin shaving. You are not to try and slip in a question on the price of bread when you are served your breakfast, and you are not to be inspired to make a slyly cryptic remark on the cut of Louis-Phillipe's coat to gauge the response of the man at the table next to you."

Enjolras sighed. "I wouldn't be so obvious!" He smiled at his friend, who helped him into his tailcoat. Of course, he did not promise. Combeferre hadn't expected him to do so, but he still had to make the point.

The injured man had passed the last two days quietly, so far as Combeferre could tell, spending a full twenty-four hours in bed before moving yesterday to his comfortable chair in the sitting room near the stove. Combeferre had stayed a second night before Enjolras insisted he would be fine by himself – and had called in twice the previous day.

Enjolras had looked the worse for wear when he answered the door to Combeferre last evening, admitting his friend and then returning to his chair. He had probably hardly stirred from the battered and comfortable seat for hours, and as soon as he regained it he wrapped the blanked draped over the side around his shoulders, although the night was comparatively mild. The newspapers that Courfeyrac had been diligently supplying were strewn around his feet. There was something cold in how he looked, with the odd shiver passing over him and a hint of frailness in the dark shadows beneath his eyes. When Combeferre offered to light the stove, Enjolras had refused. He still had more candles alight than he would normally have used, replying to Combeferre's questioning that he needed the light to work in. The accumulation of wax on the holders suggested that they had burned, untrimmed, all the previous night, and there was yet more wax this morning. Some of it was now pooling on the furniture tops, and promised to be quite a job to clear away.

He still did not discuss the attack, either to venture his own conclusions or to agree to any that Combeferre tried to draw for him, although he had been quietly grateful that his friend had thought to clear away his pamphlets and notes before Dr. Boucher visited the day after he awoke. It was a measure of the same trust that had lead his friend to give him a key to his rooms, an understanding that were anything to befall him, Combeferre was to destroy or secrete any seditious material that lay to hand.

As close as a brother, and yet with that distance that was so much a part of his character. It had been so for many years between them, almost since childhood. At times they seemed to complement each other perfectly, their very differences a strength, with an understanding that transcended words and might be communicated by a touch or a half-spoken phrase. And then something would change, a chill wind would blow and something in those cornflower blue eyes would close like a door. It was not often an overt disagreement – Enjolras could take or make use of an expressed difference of opinion, disregarding it entirely if it was too widely divergent from his own. It was a withdrawal in mood, or a single phrase uttered by his friend, an idea or comment, and Combeferre would suddenly feel that the distance between them was as great as the space between stars.

_Sometimes I am afraid for him,_ thought Combeferre, _and sometimes I am afraid _of _him. _

Looking at the bead of blood on his friend's chin, Combeferre was reminded of his reaction to being bled by Dr Boucher. Enjolras had protested, and then finally allowed it to take place. He had turned alarmingly white when they placed his arm over the basin, and while he had not flinched at the lancet opening the vein, he had looked away from the blood that oozed up in rich contrast to his pallid skin, trickling down with a faint pattering noise as it dribbled into the metal receptacle. Combeferre did not like to admit how his friend's trembling had affected him – _not fear_, he thought._ It can't be fear. He's never shuddered at blood, never flinched at discomfort, before._ But the shiver had undeniably been there, forcibly repressed, though they could see the tense set in every line of his firmly upright body.

As they stepped out into the sun, Combeferre noticed Enjolras blinking rapidly in the light. His eyes were bleary and watery.

"Did you sleep any better last night?" he asked sympathetically, remembering how Enjolras had cried out in his dreams on the first night after the attack. Enjolras shook his head. "What do you dream of?"

"I don't remember when I wake."

And that, of course, closed the subject.

By the time they reached the café, Enjolras seemed a little short of breath. He grasped the back of the chair before sitting down at one of the outside tables, as if he might be dizzy. Combeferre took charge of the ordering, trying to balance what would be a hearty meal with an invalid's appetite. Enjolras blanched a little as the plate of brioche, eggs, ham and other fat things was put before him.

"You do need to eat, you know," Combeferre admonished as he watched his friend push the food around the plate with his fork in silence. His left arm, the one that had been bled, he held stiffly to his side. Undoubtedly it was sore. "It's been three days since the accident, and I should have thought you'd be ravenous after the diet of bread and milk." And not too much of that taken, either. Enjolras already seemed a shade thinner that he had before the events of Tuesday night. Madame Evers, who had taken it upon herself to prepare his meals, had complained that he sent the trays she brought him back untouched.

Enjolras sat back and crossed his arms. "I'm sorry, Combeferre – but I really can't seem to take much of anything. It sits heavily in my stomach."

"Still cold in the limbs, too?" Enjolras nodded. "I'm going to arrange to have you bled again tomorrow if you don't show a marked improvement."

"I'd prefer if you didn't," Enjolras responded, eyes averted.

"Just a little – it will help your circulation."

Enjolras muttered something under his breath, of which Combeferre could only catch the word "blood."

"Enjolras! Combeferre!" said a softly cheerful voice. Enjolras shaded his eyes and looked up to the soft warm gaze of Jehan Prouvaire. "This is indeed the day to enjoy the weather. I was coming around to call – I'm pleased to see you're up out of bed. There's nothing like spring sunshine as a restorative."

"Good morning, Prouvaire." Enjolras said gently. "Please join us."

Though untidy as ever, there was something charmingly rustic about Jehan's attire today, Combeferre thought – his shirt was almost big enough to be a smock, the waistcoat fitted loosely, and his cravat tied more like a neckerchief than a cravat. He wore a sprig of bluebells in his lapel, only slightly faded.

"Wherever did you find bluebells still flowering?" Combeferre asked. "I thought the season was almost done."

Prouvaire smiled happily. "We went for a picnic upriver yesterday, and I found some in a little dell where they were well shaded. I took some home – I'd like to try growing him in a pot."

Enjolras gazed at them absently. "Prouvaire, did Courfeyrac deliver the notes to Caunes in time, do you know?"

"I was with him when he gave them to Caunes' secretary…" Prouvaire began, but Combeferre held up a warning hand.

"No shop talk, Jehan. Talk to Enjolras about flowers or about how thickly cut the bread is, or even where you found that hand-me-down shirt. But nothing to excite him."

"Or to interest me, if we adhere to your strictures. I've lost enough time," Enjolras replied. "If Marat could work from his bath and Couthon from his chair, then surely I can work though a mark on my throat and a few sleepless nights."

Combeferre felt relieved rather than otherwise. The strange lethargy seemed to be dissipating at last.

* * *

"So- am I Polyphemus, that you could think to trick me with a goatskin of wine and then sneak away?"

"Well, at least you're not casting me as Iscariot," Courfeyrac responded easily to Grantaire, who pulled up a chair to the table. "I take it you've heard about Enjolras? I'm flattered by the comparison to Odysseus, by-the-bye."

"You know, you did have a certain Cyclopean aspect when you had that black eye the other week…" Bossuet began, hoping to diffuse the mood. Grantaire was not inclined to have any of it.

"And you, Aristodemus – how is it that you survived to tell the tale, but not to me?" Though it could be hard to tell through Grantaire's extravagent rhetoric, it seemed that there was genuine hurt in his words. "I freely shed on you all my light and warmth, and yet you deny me the charity of a few words. By what right did that fat-head Desmarais learn of the mishap before me? I had to hear of it not from one of my comrades in arms (and by arms I don't mean vulgar weapons, but rather those graceful inspirations that are made for holding…the arms of those lovely ladies at the Place Cambrai, for instance) – but from some mere acquaintance. 'Did you hear about Enjolras?' asked he. 'No – what exploit has he performed? Has he singed an instructor's whiskers off with his searing words? Or did the revolution finally arrive only for me to slumber through it?' 'Oh,' says he, as calmly as if we were talking of ordinary things, 'someone tried to slash his throat the other night in the faubourg Saint-Marcel – Lesgle and Bahorel were on hand to save him.' I denied it, of course – for you all know I hold court on Wednesday nights at Mother Sauget's, and you could have found me there and spared me an alms of breath in telling me what had happened. But now I find that it's all true, and Aristodemus here tells me that the sun in his chariot of flames has yet to emerge from his rooms, so I live in eclipse…"

"Grantaire, he's fine. Joly said he expected to be out again this morning. Do you think having you there would have made him any better? You're not a great bear rug, you know, to be underfoot all the time. The best thing you could do would be to stay away from him –" and then Courfeyrac regretted the harshness. It was odd – they felt as free to mock Grantaire as he did them, save for this one subject, his only devotion outside the irreverence of hedonism and the cynicsm that sometimes devolved into poison. Grantaire's eyes, red rimmed, watery and slightly glazed, had that elusive wistfulness that characterised his expression when conversation came to the subject of his idol.

"You might have told me, you know," he said simply. It was true. But Courfeyrac never knew what to do with Grantaire's devotion to Enjolras – nor, it seemed did Grantaire himself. He couldn't even be sure if Enjolras was aware of it. He did sometimes wonder if their chief's apparent unconcern for the adoration he inspired in some was all that it seemed, only to feel remorse at doubting the sincerity that he knew their leader possessed. Any excessive remarks indicating personal devotion to himself he met with his silence. If he acknowledged such things at all it came through an indirect later comment, a reminder that the goal they strove for was not about personalities at all, and that they followed ideals and ideas, not individual men.

He wondered – had Grantaire imagined what he might have been able to do had he been there that night? Did he cast himself in the role of rescuer, thinking that, had he been on hand to drive off Enjolras' assailants, he might have earned himself…what? Acknowledgement? Just a warm word of gratitude, or a pledge of friendship? What exactly did he want from Enjolras, anyway?

Sometimes it seemed that all he desired was to be in the same room, to breath the same air, to move in the same circles, to hear those soaring words, even if they were not directed to him. What Grantaire wanted and needed was for an Enjolras to exist.

"Ah – Eurytus has arrived, I see," Grantaire said as Bahorel joined them. "How are your eyes? Aristodemus here seems to have survived to tell the tale – no doubt he shall do better when we come to Plataea…"

"Aristodemus knew how to fight," Bahorel said. "He just needed the incentive, and by God he had it at Plataea. A good beserker enthusiasm always helps." He was adept at fobbing off Grantairisms.

"Where have you been, Bahorel? Roaming?"

"Feuilly and I have been asking around a little," Bahorel responded, draining his glass at a swallow and refilling. "I wanted to see if there was any word on why the chief was attacked, or whether anyone else had come in for similar attentions. There's no word from the _Amis du Peuple_ or the other Societies. There are rumours that the Sûreté are nosing around a bit and looking into some of the literature that went out last December, but nothing about violent attacks."

"Well, that's good then – it is as we thought, just a one-time incident," Courfeyrac said. Bahorel shook his head.

"No, there's more. There are some odd stories circulating. Feuilly was down around the faubourg Saint-Jacques, and they were talking about some strange things happening. There are a few people that have gone missing, only to turn up dead in back alleys or the river."

"That happens all the time."

"Perhaps. Also stories among the tenements about rich men and women seen in areas where they have no business to be."

"You think that Hungarian count…?" Courfeyrac started.

"Again, perhaps. But these sorts of stories are common, particularly when people are turning up dead. If it's cholera, then there would be reports of men in dark capes poisoning the wells. Children go missing, and it's said that gypsies were seen in the area. People die under circumstances that are perhaps odd, and next thing you know, they'll be saying it was Ferdinand-Philippe, Louise-Marie, Clémentine, François and Henri they saw stalking around at night. Still, it does rather stretch credibility that he happened to be on hand just as we found Enjolras. I should never have let him go so easily." Bahorel drained another glass in frustration.

"Well, if the others are dead, we can be thankful that Enjolras survived. Perhaps because of your timely intervention."

"Again – perhaps," replied Bahorel.

Courfeyrac noticed that Grantaire, with a glass as his elbow untouched, listened intently to every word.

* * *

Ascending the wall was an easy matter. His dexterous fingers and obscene strength found handholds in what seemed to be a smooth face, and to an observer, had there been one, he would have looked like a liquid shadow flowing up the vertical surface. The sash window was closed – he opened it with one hand, pushing the shutters in, and slid to the floorboards without a sound to mark his passing. He brought a breeze in with him, and the candles, making a guttered mess in their holders, all winked out.

Enjolras's face was turned to the window, eyes closed, with the even breaths of sleep. The furrowed brow, however, suggested a slumber that was far from peaceful. His eyes slowly opened before Orssich had taken a stride towards him, something other than sound betraying the hunter's presence to his prey. Enjolras was very still and wide eyed as he took in the shadow that had entered his room and stood silhouetted against the open window.

"You are not real," the boy said in a firm tone, as if to break the stillness of the room. "You are the thing from my dreams."

"I'm the most real thing you will ever know," Orssich responded, smiling, hoping there was enough light to glance on his mouth full of sharp white teeth and elongated canines. He liked to make precisely the right impression.

Enjolras was still. The vampire could easily imagine his racing thoughts, the narrowing options that presented themselves. Abruptly, he clumsily rose from the bed, stumbling, tangling his legs in the sheets and dragging them off with himself, desperately regaining his feet and making sure the bed was between them. He opened his mouth as if he would shout for assistance, but Orssich put a finger to his lips and the sound died before it left his prey's throat. "You may not cry out," Orssich told him. "You may not make a sound unless I allow it."

Horror, quickly schooled into a resolute expression, flashed across his victim's face.

"And anyway – " Orssich shrugged, "you'd be dead before anyone even thought to answer you." He released his hold so that Enjolras might respond.

"What…what do you want of me?"

"Is it not obvious yet?" he asked, padding softly around the other side of the bed like a stalking cat. He wouldn't let Enjolras see the preternatural speed of which he was capable, not yet.

Enjolras, movements clumsy with weakness, fear, and the overwhelming presence of a vampiric being that seemed to suck away life and willpower, backed away. As Orssich approached he made a sudden lunge towards the door, a dash unbetrayed by any darting eye movement in that direction to warn of his intention. Orssich, faster still, blocked his escape with one arm, pressing the other up against the boy's neck and pinning him to the wall. He grinned at Enjolras' wide eyed horror.

"You, Enjolras. You are what I want."

Enjolras, gathering himself and ignoring the arm pressing on his neck, forcing the air through his larynx, hissed a response. "Then kill me."

Orssich ran a hand along Enjolras's neck, from his collar bone up to his jawline. Against his cold fingertips, the warmth of Enjolras' skin added sensuality to the soft texture. Orssich had no need of body heat himself, but feeling it in his victims carried the memory of sunlight and summer. He was called to warmth as a reptile that coiled itself on a sun-heated stone. Enjolras held himself completely still, reacting not at all to the trailing hand. "I have no intention of killing you. Or rather, or of letting you remain dead." He leaned in and whispered in Enjolras' ear, as though there were someone else to overhear. "I am going offer you the blessing of darkness. I will make you immortal. You will be glorious. You will be a magnificent creature of night, eschewing the sun and walking under stars alone."

Enjolras gave a strange, fierce little smile, revealing white teeth of his own.

"Kill me now, for I will fight. I have seen what you do – I have felt it. Parasite! I will never accept what you offer."

"You speak as if you had a choice." Orssich said low in his throat.

And it was then that Enjolras began to struggle. Not as he had fought during their first encounter, where at least initially his movements bespoke training and calculation. This was a raw animal reaction, a frantic battle to break free. He hooked his fingers into claws and tried to reach Orssich's eyes, he buffeted him with fists, he tried to kick with his bare feet, and when that failed he jerked up one of his knees to collide with his assailant's midsection. Every muscle was taxed to the utmost as he writhed and twisted violently in the vampire's hold.

Orssich attempted to reach into his mind again, to still the wild and erratic movements, but found to his surprise that what had been well ordered thoughts now seemed to have broken down into elusive quicksilver strains he couldn't catch at. He tried to smother and dampen down the thoughts that he could not hold, but it still took physical force to subdue the ferociously struggling boy. Finally grasping both wrists in his vice-like grip with one hand and pinning them above Enjolras' head, he ripped the bandage off his neck with the other, throwing it aside. He gripped Enjolras' jaw and twisted his victim's head to one side.

Enjolras gave a convulsive movement as the needle-sharp teeth entered the barely scabbed-over wound. Through his fingers Orssich felt the jaw clench in pain, but Enjolras made no sound. The vampire pressed in close until they were chest to chest, and the rapid heartbeat and breath of his prey reverberated in his own body. Orssich flicked a tongue over the wound, knowing the intimacy would provoke a reaction, gratified to feel that Enjolras' hands clenched into fists. He exhaled an icy breath that caused an involuntary shudder on the exposed skin, a ripple of gooseflesh, and then began to drink.

The vampire forced himself to pay attention to what he was doing rather than losing himself, as he was wont to do, in the lushly rich taste of warm liquid in his mouth and throat. Each swallow must be carefully gauged - if he did not exercise the strictest self discipline, he knew himself quite capable, in this highly aroused state, of draining his victim's veins dry, or of damaging the artery to the extent that his prey bled out.

Overpowered, Enjolras was still rigid and unyielding. If he succumbed at all to the seductive pull of the vampire's hold, Orssich could find no sense of it in his rapid, scattered thoughts – only a sense of violation and vehement denial. When he collapsed, it came all at once, as if only force of will had held him upright so long. His knees buckled as Orssich released his wrists to catch him, his head coming to rest on the revenant's shoulder where he feebly tried to lift it and push away as his consciousness span away into the waiting dark.

Orssich held him a few minutes, stroking the golden hair where the boy's head leaned on him heavily. "Only me," he said softly. "The only one for you to hold on to." Then with no more effort than it would have taken a mortal to carry a kitten, he picked him up and laid him across the disordered bed. He touched his fingertips to his victim's forehead. It was disconcerting how fragmented Enjolras' thoughts were – as if, unable to escape the vampire's thrall, he sought refuge in hiding in another way.

But it would ultimately be to no avail – the end would remain the same. Already he was falling away, into the mesmeric dream world. Physiological changes would follow. The way was being prepared, and soon all that would remain to complete the transformation would be for Enjolras to ingest the daemonic blood of the undead.

Now that he had the leisure to do so, he contemplated his prey, leaning in so close that he could feel the soft, shallow breaths of the student on his own face. He examined the features below him, taking aesthetic pleasure in the long, light lashes and deep lids with fine veins visible just under the skin at this close distance, the delicate structure of the cheekbones, the chiselled bridge of the nose and arched nostrils, the full lower lip.

Enjolras was high and pure, a creature of strength, of reserves of power that were electrifying in close proximity. There was an unadulterated potency to his character - his piercing glance, his sureness of touch, and the depth of the passionate convictions Orssich had seen in his thoughts – all spoke of purpose and authority. To subjugate that and hold him powerless was a heady experience. He felt a rush of intoxicating exhilaration at the boy's current helplessness, unconscious and vulnerable. Irma liked to prey on the weak, but he found the greatest pleasure was in holding those with the strongest vitality and willpower in thrall.

Orssich passed his hands one more time over the pale fair face to make sure he would remember nothing clearly, and then left the rooms as he had entered.


	6. Chapter 6 Nightfall

A/N: Courfeyrac, who has had the attention span of a butterfly in most previous chapters, manages a long (and perhaps over-long) internal monologue in this. There is a point to it, and I hope it's not buried. This does not presage a slew of "Enjolras, this is your life!" musings from the rest of the _Amis_ on their initial impressions of him.

AmZ picked up on my theft tribute to John Fowles!

Thanks to all those who have reviewed this…it helps assuage the occasional pangs of guilt at actually writing a vampire fanfic.

Special thanks to TheHighestPie for her beta work and encouragement. I'm pathetically self-conscious about writing this, but am perversely quite enjoying a little journey into vampiric conventions.

Courfeyrac, incidentally, seems to learn his card tricks at a Paris affiliate of the Drones.

* * *

**Chapter 6**

**And as softly thou art sleeping  
****To thee shall I come creeping  
And thy life's blood drain away.  
And so shalt thou be trembling  
For thus shall I be kissing  
And death's threshold thou' it be crossing  
With fear, in my cold arms. **

**And last shall I thee question  
Compared to such instruction  
What are a mother's charms? **

Heinrich August Ossenfelder, _Der Vampir,_ 1748

* * *

Courfeyrac took his fob watch out of his pocket and checked the time. Certainly, they were late. He had agreed to meet Enjolras and Combeferre here by his favourite statue in the Luxembourg Gardens (it depicted a nymph who – judging from her expression, lack of garments, and the way in which she embraced a satyr – was particularly broad-minded, even according to such standards by which nymphs are judged). Had it been Bossuet or Joly he would have simply assumed they'd been waylaid over breakfast or had not yet risen at all, or had it been Prouvaire he might have been lost in some reverie born of flowers or contemplating nature's destructive side. The poet had been known to lose himself for upwards of half-an-hour in watching trout snap at insects above a stream before finally delivering himself of an observation on the place of the principle of destruction in the universe. But if anyone in the ABC were to be trusted to be punctual – certainly more so than he himself – it was Enjolras. After all, his time was not his own – it was the Republic's, and to waste it was a sin against the _Patrie_.

"Devil take it," he muttered. The morning was wearing on, but as there still weren't really enough petticoats to make loitering in the gardens worth the while, he decided to call by Enjolras' rooms to see what had detained him. "After all, if a man makes an effort to get up before noon, it is quite inconsiderate of his friends to turn him into a loafer." He was quite capable of doing that himself.

He met Combeferre in the street outside Enjolras' building, breathing hard and walking fast, just on the inside of a jog. "I've just been back to my place to get the spare key to Enjolras' rooms," he explained as the porter opened the door for them and they took the stairs to the first floor two at a time. "Enjolras didn't answer to my knocking when I called for him this morning, and his concierge hasn't got a key to his rooms."

"Perhaps he already went out?" suggested Courfeyrac without much hope.

Madame Evers was standing outside, clasping her hands together. "No," she told him, "he did not open the door for the girl this morning to take his water, and I'm at a loss as to what is going on. If only he wasn't so stubborn about me having a key, or about this ridiculous habit of always locking his door!"

"It's alright, Madame," Courfeyrac reassured her as Combeferre tried the door. "I'm sure he's just a heavy sleeper." This was not true – Courfeyrac knew that Enjolras was usually the lightest of sleepers. The door swung open and, Courfeyrac briefly waving Evers back, they crossed to the bedroom.

"Good God!" exclaimed Courfeyrac. Enjolras was diagonally across the bed on his back, his head hanging over the side and one arm dangling to the floor. Most of the bedclothes lay half on the ground, and there was a trail of bloody droplets across the sheets that had soaked into the fabric and turned a dull red. He was drawing deep, rasping breaths that sounded painful.

"Help me put him to rights," Combeferre said tightly. Fortunately they had not yet pushed the narrow bed back up against the wall, as it allowed Courfeyrac access to the other side. They lifted and settled their friend back against the pillows. With deft movements Combeferre took his pulse at the wrist and put a hand on his friend's forehead to check his temperature. Then he turned his attention to the wound.

"The bandage is over there," Courfeyrac pointed a few feet away, then set about pulling up the sheets. Although it should be the very least of his concerns, there was something undignified about those pale, long bare legs exposed below the nightshirt. Courfeyrac felt the protective urge to cover his friend's dignity. "Can you wake him?"

"Enjolras?" Combeferre asked, giving him a gentle shake._ Don't let it be a repeat of the coma after the attack. _

"Shall I get Madame Evers to go for a doctor?" Courfeyrac asked quietly. She stood quietly back, her hands clasped as if she were telling her beads.

Enjolras's throat moved in a hard swallow, and his eyes half opened. They were turned up, so that all that could be seen under the quivering lashes was a sliver of white

"Wake up, Enjolras…"

He began to shiver violently.

"Can you hear me? It's Combeferre…please let me know you hear me."

Enjolras sighed and gave one more convulsive shudder.

"nnnnnn….I hear you" he whispered, sounding exhausted, his words flat, his eyes still turned up under the lids. "Did not…did not Isaiah write of night creatures dwelling in the ruins of Babylon?"

"Enjolras, what you talking about?"

"…are we to be so sure that Gilles de Rais lied about the fiends that visited him? Why should not the demon Barron have seduced him? For there is a power in blood that is not equalled elsewhere. It redeems, but it also damns. A physician's lancet may save a patient, but when we are bled by bullets or bayonet our life ebbs away. Is there a difference in the blood that courses through our veins? Does it not unite us all as brothers? But what of those who steal blood…is the daemon that comes by night not merely the avatar of those who thrive on the life of others, the parasite of the _Ancien Régime_ reborn. De Rais died for his obscene crimes, but his brothers in bloodlust yet live, and they are hungry. They would prey on us and bend us to their ends…"

He was twisting the bedsheets with his hands, his voice rising as he uttered the terrible, mad words.

Courfeyrac swallowed and, disengaging them from the sheets, took both of his friend's cold hands in his own. Enjolras, he had observed, was a surprisingly tactile man, as was Courfeyrac himself. He hoped he would respond to the touch. "We're here. There's no bleeding to be done. Come back to us, my friend."

Another shiver passed through the sick man, and his eyes opened properly. "It's all right," he said, his voice calmer. "Am I speaking? Sometimes I don't know whether I speak aloud…I see things in my head…"

"Only in your imagination," Courfeyrac said gently.

"You've passed a very bad night," Combeferre added. "Your wound has been aggravated." Enjolras tried to jerk away from the probing fingers that touched it. "I just need to examine it…" He shook his head – it was a pulpy mess, looking almost as bad as it had the first night.

"Are you sure we are quite alone?" Enjolras whispered, anxious again. "There isn't a shadow in the corner, is there?"

His friends exchanged glances.

"There are only we three here," Combeferre reassured him. "Did anyone…did someone come here last night?"

Enjolras shook his head urgently. "No! I was alone. No one came."

The door had been locked, Courfeyrac thought. He wandered over to the window as Combeferre attended the wound. The shutters were open, though the sash window was almost closed. He opened it and looked out. It was a direct drop to the ground, one floor below, with no real handholds. He supposed it might be possible, perhaps with a ladder, but even in this quiet street in the middle of the night such a blatant intrusion was likely to be noticed. He shook himself – it was ridiculous even to be considering these things. He noticed a ruddy brown smudge on the white sill. Dried blood?

"Courfeyrac!" Combeferre suddenly said with some urgency. He turned to see Enjolras leaning over the side of the bed, vomiting.

* * *

While he had no clear memory at all of what had happened to him the previous night, the emotions it evoked were both clear and overwhelming. He had been held, powerless, and violated both in body and soul – that much he knew. Something had been done to him – something that was utter anathema to him. The fact that he did not know precisely what it was made it all the worse.

His body, reacting to the violence of his revulsion, had rejected the meagre contents of his stomach. He felt hands supporting his shoulders and someone – Courfeyrac – thrust a metal dish under his head, the same one that had been used to catch the blood when he had been bled a couple of days before. That association redoubled the sick feeling, and his gut clenched more tightly. Now he was only casting up green bile, and the convulsive cramping was extremely painful. He wanted to brush off their hands as well – he did not want to be touched, not when…

When…

No one else touched me, he told himself, trying to gasp for air, no one could have touched me. It was a nightmare.

Combeferre was rubbing his back, and while the movement might have normally been comforting, right now it made his skin crawl. With an effort, he brought his breathing under control and gathered himself before rolling onto his back. Courfeyrac was at the door asking the concierge for water and towels, and Combeferre was uttering some nonsense as he wiped his mouth with a damp cloth. He almost smiled – it was the same tone of voice his friend might have used with the street children he encountered.

"Enjolras, I'm going to send for the doctor."

"No!" he exclaimed forcefully. "It was nothing – I'm better now…I just…should not have eaten yesterday. It was a bad night."

Combeferre sat on the side of the bed. "Listen to me. You are not well. I don't know if you were exposed to some malodorous air the other night, or if this is all the result of your injury, but you are sick, and we need to treat it."

Controlling his rising panic and the aversion he was feeling to touch, Enjolras grabbed Combeferre's hand.

"Please do not send for the doctor. I'll trust you, Combeferre – I'll stay in bed. Just not the doctor."

"I don't understand." Combeferre looked puzzled. "Why this sudden dislike for the medical profession?"

"Because he'd bleed me!" Enjolras said, hating the frantic note in his voice, but desperate, oh so desperate, to avoid feeling his arm immobilised, the bite of the lancet, and the sensation of his life draining away, as when…something…had happened. Something like that. But worse, so much worse.

"I do not know where this violent opposition to bleeding comes from," Combeferre said patiently, "but I promise you, it will only be done if necessary, and only in small amounts."

"No!" Now there was no controlling the panic. It pulled Combeferre up short. "For the blood is the life, and they will have it! He will not stop, he will have every drop of life and will and essence…that rapacious maw will consume everything. And I don't know how much longer I can fight it. I can feel everything falling away. There will be no peace, no refuge – not even death is an escape…"

Combeferre was shocked. Courfeyrac looked up aghast from where he was kneeling on the floor, trying to clumsily clean up the mess.

"All right," Combeferre said slowly. Courfeyrac transferred his surprised look to the medical student. "It's alright. Just…just sleep now. No one will touch you against your will."

Enjolras leaned back on the pillows, utterly drained. He obediently rinsed his mouth and spat into a cup when Combeferre held water to his lips, then gave him another cup to drink from. He felt the water slide down his throat and settle uneasily in his tender stomach.

"Please close the shutters," he whispered, the light paining him.

"Shall I light a candle?" Combeferre asked solicitously.

"No…no light, please." Just the cool and soothing dark.

* * *

Combeferre conferred hurriedly with Courfeyrac in the study. "I'll stay with him."

"What are you going to do? What can you do? Are you really not going to bleed him?"

Combeferre's medical training warred with his instincts. "No – not while he's so adamantly against it, and showing renewed signs of anaemia. He's not…" he stopped.

"Not rational at the moment, is what you're thinking." Courfeyrac supplied. "And I know what else you're thinking, too."

Combeferre looked at him sharply. "What is that?"

"Whether this has something to do with his family…illness."

"You know about that?" Combeferre was surprised. Courfeyrac shrugged.

"Enough about it. I've guessed most of it. Some things Enjolras has said."

Combeferre almost smiled, running his hands through his hair. "You never cease to astonish me, Courfeyrac. I believe the stones of the Pont Neuf would confide in you."

"And I'd lay a wager that you're also worried about the _Amis_ finding out and reaching certain unfortunate conclusions. You know that they won't judge him like that."

"Perhaps not our closest associates, but what of others who do not know him so well? You know that he is already regarded as a rather peculiar personality in some quarters."

"Not peculiar. Well, perhaps a little." He had to concede that Lesgle had been known to declare their chief not right in the head – but surely that was a joke. "Listen, Combeferre – I'd sooner doubt my own sanity than doubt that of Enjolras (and I'm sure I'd find many to agree with me on who was the more suspect), but if you're that concerned, why not ask Joly's opinion? You know he's read up on the latest –" he paused, looking for the tactful phrase. "Diseases of the mind," he decided on. "And he'd be discreet. He could also find a specialist if necessary."

"There's nothing wrong with his mind. This is simply a – a form of delirium. Perhaps some sort of inflammation. A brain fever of some description."

"And who are you trying to convince here? You know that _I _believe him to be sane. But I think we're looking at something rather more serious that a scrape on the neck."

"I had thought that all this was perhaps brought about because Enjolras simply needed time away from Paris," Combeferre said sadly. "Between his plans and his studies, I thought he'd been worn ragged and I had failed to notice until he was attacked. But as you know, I can't suggest he go to his family home for a holiday. And he's always rejected offers to accompany me to my mother's or sisters' homes – I can't say I blame him, as his arrival with me would cause a stir in our circle…there are too many ties of kin and friendship between our families for him to simply slip quietly into life back in Montauban for a few weeks without his father finding out. I think his father still has the house near Toulon – that might be the best hope. But you know he's hard to pry out of Paris, unless he has business to attend to. "

"He hasn't seemed very keen to join me back with the old pater and rest of the family in Nîmes," Courfeyrac agreed. "I've offered a few times over the years. Perhaps we should invent a pretext – tell him that gunpowder is going for a song in Aix-les-Bains and bundle him off there."

Combeferre grunted. "That might be what it would take. But in this state – well, I think we need to keep him here until…" he paused…"he gets a bit of strength back," he finished euphemistically, not wanting to refer to that terrifying, disjointed rambling.

"Are you sure about this?" Courfeyrac asked, grabbing Combeferre's upper arm as he turned to walk back to the other room. "This is a burden for you to take on. Enjolras would not ask you to do so, were he…well, were he feeling himself. He wouldn't want you to act as his personal physician - you're missing classes, and you must be exhausted with all this running around. You shouldn't have to make decisions on his treatment, either."

"But who else is to make them?" Combeferre sighted, rubbing the bridge of his nose between his fingers. "He has no other family in Paris that he'd trust, and he's getting worse about having a doctor."

"So what do we do if this is really serious? I don't know about you, but I shouldn't care to explain to his father that we didn't seek treatment for him."

"I'll ask Joly to come in and help," Combeferre conceded. "And when he's calmer I'll discuss with him what we can do to arrange alternate medical care. Should the need arise."

"Well, you know I stand ready to assist in whatever way I can. I can juggle, do tricks..." Combeferre smiled at his friend. "And I'm a most efficacious errand runner. More nippy than your average gamin. Just send me trotting along when you need me to pick up something."

Combeferre gripped his arm briefly in gratitude.

"For a start, you can help me to finish cleaning up."

In the next room, Enjolras lay with eyes wide open. He should not have heard, but their words were coming to him through the thick walls in fragments. He heard the fluttering of a moth in the corner of the room, its wing beats against the ceiling moulding sounding like the rapid beat of a military drum.

* * *

Ambrus was really becoming quite absurdly melodramatic about his latest game, thought Marfa. She was sitting in the corner of a cabaret wine bar in the Marais, waiting to see what prey presented itself to her. Usually her objective was either robbery or blood, but tonight it was both. She wanted to play, as well. Ambrose's salacious account of his seduction of the student had evoked lust of more than one kind.

She didn't have the patience or the inclination to go through with his theatrics. She liked her gothic tales in books – Irma had laughingly told her that she learned English to read Radcliffe or Lewis in the original as others learned Latin to read Tacitus or Catullus – but her method of killing was short, sharp and cruel. The idea of prolonged torture appealed to her, but she knew she'd be unable to restrain herself from carry through a plan like that of Ambrus. She admired his discipline.

He was tremendously entertaining – all that talk of dark angels and wings of despair, of conquering the light. It was so gorgeously louche. There were plenty of pretty boys in Paris, if one's tastes ran that way, but she was beginning to feel a rather intense curiosity about this gorgeous blond that he told Irma about, who was to join their ranks.

Marfa was the youngest of the group, having enthusiastically accepted Irma's advances during the last quarter of the previous century, and she keenly looked forward to a new plaything, someone lower in the hierarchical structure than herself. Ambrus spoke of enslaving the boy, and that excited her – Irma had treated her like a pretty doll when she had turned, and she wondered how this Enjolras would respond to the like treatment. A political radical, a revolutionary, even, Ambrus said. Politics was so terribly, terribly dull, but radicalism sounded quite appealing – it brought to mind those intoxicating days of the 1790s. She hadn't cared two figs for the Revolution itself, but the raw emotions and passion had been dazzling. She only wished that she could have stood in daylight in the Place de la Revolution to witness the spilling of blood that soaked into the ground in such quantities that it tainted the water supply. As it was, she had joined the night time mobs that raged through the streets in September of 1792, a gleeful participant in the massacres.

She was enjoying the flashes of thought and feeling from the crowd tonight. Men and women drunk with liquor, love, lust and hate. But with all the colour and noise around her, she knew her victim as soon as she saw him. Strong, tall and tanned. Military or, more likely, a merchant seaman…perfect. Sea-fit with hard muscles and leathery skin. He was shouting generous rounds, and she hoped he still had his pockets sufficiently full of the money he'd been paid off with.

Marfa might have snapped her fingers and had him, so little effort did it take - she smiled winningly, and he withdrew his arm from the dollymop around whose waist it had been clasped. The woman glared at her, but then recoiled from the grin Marfa gave her.

_Then up to the towers I spring _

_Where the poor pent captives sigh, _

_Hiding well from them my wing, _

_To make plaintive harmony. _

_One smiles when he sees me nigh, _

_And one dreams where he doth lie. _

_Of his cradle by the herd. _

_I would swiftly, swiftly, swiftly fly, _

_If I were a little bird. _

She sang the little ditty sweetly as they left the cabaret. "Is it not a pretty tune?" she asked him, as he snaked the arm that had so latterly been around another's waist about her own. The sweat of his palm left a mark upon her dress.

"Very pretty," he breathed with wine laden fumes into her ear. "Nearly as pretty as you. You're not a tart, are you? You dress too good and smell too fine."

Clumsy, oafish compliment. She kissed him.

"Your lips are cold!" he exclaimed. "Shall I warm them for you?"

She drew him into an ally with half-promises of a quick knee-trembler against the wall, feeling his pockets through his clothes. His purse seemed heavy – perfect. She wrapped one hand in his hair, knocking his cap to the ground, and stroked his chest through the fabric with the other.

"Mademoiselle…ah, Mademoiselle…" he murmured, and she drew into the heat that radiated from him, and his arousal that she was sensitive enough to feel even through the layers of clothing between them. It was not his touch on her breasts that she found erotic, it was the sheer warmth of him, the hot blood that she could sense moving in pulses through his veins with each heart beat, circulating through every inch of his skin, coursing through his heart and the complex group of organs. She revelled a moment in the rush of air through his lungs.

"_She, for the troubadour hopelessly wept,  
Sadly she thought of him when others slept.  
Singing in search of thee would I might roam…_"

Marfa trilled the words happily, then added "that's English, you know."

He spat out contemptuously what he thought of the English. "Now let's get down to it, you pretty witch."

Then she fastened her hand on the back of his neck. He was immediately immobilised, completely in her power. He could no more have moved his little finger than he could have flown.

"You'd like to have me, wouldn't you? Your imagination, while crude, is so deliciously explicit. You'd thrust me against the wall and then thrust into me. And yet here we are, with you held by the scruff of the neck, and there's not a thing you can do to stop me doing precisely as I wish to you. To think – all those miles you've travelled, all those perils you've faced, only to come home and find that the greatest danger is a girl in a blue silk dress." That was as philosophical as Marfa was inclined to be.

"_Troubadour, troubadour come to thy home.  
Lady love, lady love welcome me home_" she sang lightly.

"And now you're terrified. Do you know how absolutely marvellous it is to feel your terror? How very much I enjoy this?" She grabbed the front of his shirt, ran her hand down, ripping it open with ease. She put her hand on his chest and dug her fingernails in, smiling into his rictus of pain. "Shall I rip out your heart, and hold it up to you still beating?" His eyes were starting out of his head now in blind panic, as he hitched in breaths to utter a scream that would not come. "Your eyes displease me. They start out of your head so foolishly. I think I'll pluck them out."

She was rather annoyed, drawing her cloak around the front of her gown when she'd finished, to realise that she'd ruined another dress. The beret sleeves really were impractical for this sort of business. And the blood could never be properly washed out of silk. Irma always told her she was too messy when she fed.

The coins and notes she took from his pockets would buy her a new one. Russet, perhaps? But pastel shades suited her colouring better.

* * *

Courfeyrac sat in the Musain, morosely tossing playing cards into his upturned hat on the table in sullen silence. His aim was off, and he seemed to miss as many as he landed in it. Usually it was a skill he trusted, honed by hours of practice, and even with a bottle of wine or two across his chest his aim was good.

Prouvaire had tried to draw him into conversation, but – for once – he was not inclined to chat. Prouvaire, Lesgle and Bahorel had dined there that night, though the over all mood was a subdued one. He'd told them of the morning's visit, without discussing the details. Combeferre was worried, he knew, as was Courfeyrac. It was completely unnerving to see Enjolras so absolutely not himself.

He knew that people thought him an odd companion for the reserved, graceful blond. Some put their friendship down to Courfeyrac's notoriously wide ranging taste in friends – he never restricted himself to those with natures akin to his own, but had a habit of collecting interesting personalities. Others who knew of his political leanings assumed it was more in the nature of an alliance than friendship.

Both held an element of truth, but more so the former. Courfeyrac found a never-ending delight in the diversity of human nature. The trials of his friends involved him no less than his own, and he rejoiced with them with complete relish when there was cause. He could run with those of similar inclinations in humour and amusement at any time. But sometimes he sought out those who were as different from him in temperament and outlook as sun from shadow.

He met Enjolras during their first year as law students. The young man – and he had looked very young - had intrigued him at first on the basis of his remarkable appearance, but had been so reserved when Courfeyrac had found a pretext to speak with him that he had not pursued an acquaintance. There was no shortage of more entertaining company to be had. Soon he was pointing out Enjolras to others as one of the sights of the Latin Quartier. "M. Enjolras, our resident example of fine Parian – and about as animated. Unless you get him on the subject of politics. Then you'll find that ice can burn."

Courfeyrac had his own nascent political interests as well – initially if only because they had served to tweak his parents. But he had also a growing sense that something really was awry in the world. Poverty and inequitable laws. Much as he despised the idea of study, he knew that he had a singular talent for legal argument, for hypothetical scenarios and the nuances of justice. And he was becoming attuned to something in the air, a sense of possibilities and change. Perhaps they were not bound to the past after all. Perhaps it was not enough to throw up one's hands and assume that because it had always been so, it always must be so, let republics and empires revolve as they would.

He had a vivid recollection of the day that he had first really spoken with Enjolras. He had been sitting under a tree in the Gardens, legs splayed out in front of himself on the grass, leaning back on his elbows, debating with a fellow student about the _Biens nationaux__. _Partly he argued out of a sheer delighted perversity in taking an opposing viewpoint, but as he spoke, the conviction had grown in him that he was speaking truth. The words and ideas fell into place, and the fluency with which he articulated them surprised himself. It felt right. It felt true.

A small crowd had gathered to listen and contribute their own viewpoints. He was not aware that Enjolras was among them until he was suddenly forced to take his leave of the gathering, recalling an appointment with friends for a card game. Someone fell into step beside him, and it was with some surprise he recognised the cap of bright hair under the hat.

"You speak very well," Enjolras said, without preliminaries. There was something in the other man's expression, an engement that illuminated his features, which almost completely banished any suggestion of aloofness. "Your viewpoints are very sound – do you really hold those ideas?"

"I think I might. I've managed to talk myself into that perspective. I'm very persuasive, you know," Courfeyrac responded flippantly, still somewhat intoxicated by the power of his own words.

Enjolras seemed a bit puzzled. "You're one of that clique that frequents the Voltaire, aren't you? Billiards and cards."

"Two of the noblest pursuits in the world – add dominoes, and you have a perfect triumvirate. In fact, I'm off to play right now. Care to join me?" He was curious as to whether Enjolras would accept the invitation. He'd lay good odds that he would not. Enjolras seemed to consider.

"I'll walk with you, if I may. You are not quite what I took you for. You're a rather singular man."

Courfeyrac smiled. Enjolras was clearly trying – and, thus far, failing – to get a grasp on his character.

"No less so than yourself." Enjolras smiled in return at that, and for the first time Courfeyrac noticed the frank candour of his expression..

He found himself drifting into the same circle Enjolras and his friend Combeferre, and as he did so the impulses of that moment of conviction in the Gardens, that startling clarity of vision, had grown in him. There were wrongs in the world that could be righted. There were battles that were worth fighting.

He knew that many of their fellow students thought Enjolras had a demeanour so icy it could freeze a bonfire, and – having not so long before entertained the same impressions – Courfeyrac could do little to persuade them otherwise. Enjolras could charm when he was so inclined, but for those who knew him only slightly, and even some who knew him somewhat better, his aloofness was chilly. While he did take the time to speak with those of similar political inclinations, or those whose outlook he was trying to gauge, at other times he could be unnervingly silent, particularly if the subject had veered away from that which immediately concerned him – and all that really concerned him was the Republic. He could sit for hours in the corner where his friends had gathered, silently writing notes or gazing into the middle distance, until one almost forgot he was there. But one never quite forgot entirely, no – he was certainly a presence, not an absence, even when he did not speak.

Adamantly chaste as Enjolras was, Courfeyrac tended to look upon him as a sort of innocent in matters of women – there was no doubt he was naive, as far as Courfeyrac was concerned, about their true nature. He could be unintentionally amusing when expounding his ideas on Virtuous Republican Wifehood and Motherhood, although he'd unfortunately stopped mentioning the subject since Courfeyrac, Joly and Lesgle had been unable to maintain any solemnity when he ventured a few remarks on the matter. Combeferre, silencing his more mirthful friends with a stern look, had gently suggested he wasn't quite across the subject of women, and perhaps he might want to avoid it as a topic to pronounce upon.

But about certain matters connected with females he had a surprising knowledge and lack of prudishness – he had once quenched a visitor to their circle who had argued that prostitutes chose their own lot by delivering a chillingly detailed series of case studies of children, both girls and boys, as young as five who had been sold by their parents or forced onto the streets to sell themselves. About adult whores he was no less emphatic, outlining the ways by which a woman might find herself stripped of alternatives to prostitution. His words had been clinical, brutal and explicit, fuelled with a fury all the more impressive as it was kept so strongly in check, and given impact as Enjolras did not usually speak of the matter in such concrete terms.

Not all reactions to his friend were easy to countenance. A casual remark during a billiard game had revolted Courfeyrac. "Hanging around with that statue, eh?" said Morel, a student who took several classes with Courfeyrac. "It's your shot, by the way. So, does he drink Nectar, dine on Ambrosia, and shit marble?"

Every chivalrous instinct in Courfeyrac rose up, and he had to regretfully discard the idea of breaking his cue over the man's head. That was not the way to answer malicious humour of that kind. He took careful aim, took his next shot, stood upright and cocked his head to examine the results, then shrugged his shoulders.

"I've never inquired. If you're going into the quarrying business, I could ask."

The ensuing laughter was at his opponent's expense, and Courfeyrac relished the wordy skirmish that followed, emerging with victor's laurels, of course.

It was even worse when their friends made crudely suggestive remarks or indulged in vulgar speculation about Enjolras and women, as they inevitably did. The very rigid chastity that caused some to veer completely away from the subject when with Enjolras inspired others to heights of greater lewdness, the man's very reserved purity seeming to provoke an earthier response. Bossuet was a notable offender, and could not understand why Courfeyrac – usually the most ribald of company – did not tolerate graphic jests about how their chief might behave in bed.

There had been something about Enjolras' demeanour this morning that had truly alarmed Courfeyrac, even more so than the disjointed, rambling words. It was the look in his eyes, and how he had recoiled from touch. When he had taken his chief's hands in his own, they had stilled from a sort of frozen fear, not from any calmness or comfort Courfeyrac had been able to impart.

It was disquieteningly familiar. He had seen the same revulsion and terror in a girl he had known. She had turned up at his rooms one evening, frightened and sick, recoiling from his touch. It had taken him some time to calm her down enough to discover what was amiss – that she had been assaulted and her virtue outraged by a male acquaintance.

To Courfeyrac, for whom the greatest joy was in mutual pleasure and carefree, unencumbered intimacy, the idea of violating someone was a perversion in the utmost degree. The thought of forcing himself on someone unwilling was loathsome. He had wanted to scour the streets for her assailant, and still felt frustrated that the deed had gone unpunished, with the victim too afraid to give him many details, insisting she could not be sure of the identity of her attacker when Courfeyrac had voiced a plan to find and hold him accountable. Who knew – perhaps that much was true. The grisette had left Paris soon after, returning to her home village, her pockets full of whatever money Courfeyrac could lay his hands on.

Courfeyrac knew that Enjolras had not been assaulted like _that_, but he could not dismiss the same sense of wounded violation that had radiated from both the girl and his friend – the pain and…had it been shame?

There was something he and Combeferre were missing about what was happening to Enjolras. That conviction was growing in him.

"You can't even manage potshots with your cards. And your cravat is a disgrace even to a law student" said a voice heavily beside him. "You are the very picture of the rake in the final stage of his progress," Courfeyrac sighed. The last person he needed at this juncture was Grantaire.

"I could say the same of you." Courfeyrac responded, wrinkling his nose. "Did you bathe in stale wine? When did you last change your clothes?" Grantaire was not exactly careful of his appearance, but he usually at least made an effort not to be overtly offensive in his person.

"I have been consorting with Mnemosyne and not the Nysiads most of this past day," he said earnestly, and not in his usual tone of declamation. "I have drunk of her pool."

"I'm not in the mood for it, Grantaire." Courfeyrac said, flicking his final card hard at his hat, where it bounced off the brim. "If you've something to say, then come out and say it."

"I've been drinking with some of the Morgue attendants."

"Delightful company you keep. Pray, what kept you from remaining with them? I can't imagine that I have anything to offer to counter their charms."

"Listen, Courfeyrac. Not to me – not to the good old Winecask – but listen to me as if I were one of your brothers in the Republic." His earnest tone brought Courfeyrac up sharply, and for the first time he looked at Grantaire. Something was burning in the drowned blue eyes.

"What is it?" he asked slowly.

"There is something going on in the underworld," Grantaire said. He was choosing his words with more care than Courfeyrac had ever heard him use. "The Morgue attendant told me that the authorities are taking note. It didn't matter before – when it was the odd gamin brought in with his throat cut out – but now they can't ignore what is happening. More bodies, some with wounds at their wrists, sometimes twin punctures…and sometimes with wounds in their necks."

"Bahorel suggested as much…" Courfeyrac said slowly, considering.

"Listen! The Morgue attendant I drink with – he's overheard the police officers talking about it. There are currents astir in the underworld of Paris. You are all so consumed with fermenting political discontent and with your wages and education and Conventions, that you can't see that something else is going on."

"What would you have us do? Even if Enjolras fell victim to this…madman, stalker, whatever it is, he is safe now. Let the police track this killer. It's nothing for us to meddle in."

"What makes you think it's over?" Grantaire asked. His eyes were wide and fearful. "Guard Enjolras well, Courfeyrac, because if you speak to the men who live in the gutter, you'll hear that more than just the usual fog of political malaise is blocking out the stars. There is something very wrong in Paris, and it's not just the rising price of bread." He clasped a flask of wine to his lips, and he drank deeply. "An attendant showed me one of the bodies. A child. I don't think even a madman could bleed a child so white. And yet, when they found her, there was not a drop of blood on the ground or on her clothes. Just those holes in her neck."

Something that had been bothering Courfeyrac clicked into place in his mind. That story about the bloated, gorged body in the churchyard. And a play…

Someone had told him the plot. It must have played at least a decade ago. He'd never seen it performed, but it had been quite the sensation in its day. Charles Nodier was the author.

What had the title been? _Lamia_? No -

_Le Vampire_.

Fairy stories. Tales to terrify children and superstitious peasants. Fodder for melodrama.

Grantaire grabbed his arm, and his eyes were those of a frightened child. "You must keep him safe. And please – you must let me help."

* * *

Combeferre should have been relieved that Enjolras slept most of the day, but instead he felt nervous. There was something in the uneven, stentorian tone of his breathing that was disquietening in the darkened room. He sounded terrible, though there was no actual congestion in his chest. Most curiously, Enjolras, though white as the sheets he lay on, looked somehow more handsome than ever in the dim lightning. However pale his gums were, his lips were red, and there was a flush of colour in each cheek. Combeferre thought it might be the signs of fever, but when he touched his friend's forehead, it was cold.

He picked up a volume that had fallen beside the bed. A collection of Rousseau's letters. He smiled softly – it was somehow typical of Enjolras that in illness he should turn back to Jean-Jacques. Hopefully the thoughts in the book had afforded his friend some comfort.

He lit a candle so that he might sit by his sleeping friend and read. Enjolras murmured something in his sleep and turned over, his back towards the light. The poor illumination was a strain on Combeferre's eyes, but he did not care to either light more candles or to leave the room. He flipped through the letters – it had been some time since he had read them, and it was always something of a joy to rediscover a book one enjoyed, like renewing an acquaintance with an old friend.

Combeferre was jolted abruptly out of his contemplations when he came to the text of a letter written to de Beaumont.

_If there is a well-attested history in the world, it is that of the Vampires. _

_Nothing is missing from it: interrogations, certifications by Notables, Surgeons, Parish Priests, Magistrates. The judicial proof is one of the most complete. And with all that, who believes in Vampires? Will we all be damned for not having believed?_

The words were so heavily underscored in pencil that it seemed as if the lines might go through the paper.

He looked at the back of Enjolras' head, hearing that painful breathing, and felt sick at heart. Rousseau's argument from corollary seemed to have struck a rather different cord with Enjolras than that which the author had intended. When had his friend marked this passage? And from whence did this dark obsession spring?


	7. Chapter 7 Flickers of Light

_A/N: Thank you to TheHighestPie for her beta work (and for noticing that Oscar seems to have a lot in common with __Lucien de Rubempré_ - there's more than one gorgeous blue-eyed blond in Paris during this period), and to AmZ for a suggestion that enabled the inclusion of scene I wasn't too sure about. There are a couple of specific nods to M R James and Bram Stoker in this chapter...although it's probably redundant to mention Stoker when the subject is vampires.

_The vampires are slashy in this, but that rather goes without saying when you're talking about vampires._

**Chapter 7 - Flickers of Light**

_**The name given to these ghosts is Oupires, or Vampires, that is to say blood-suckers, and the particulars which are related of them are so singular, so detailed, accompanied with circumstances so probable and so likely, as well as with the most weighty and well-attested legal deposition that it seems impossible not to subscribe to the belief which prevails in those countries that these Apparitions do actually come forth from their graves and that they are able to produce the terrible effects which are so widely and so positively attributed to them.**_

-_ Dissertations sur les Apparitions des Anges, des Demons et des Esprits, et sur les Revenants et Vampires_, Dom Augustin Calmet, 1746

* * *

Madame Evers opened the door herself when Courfeyrac called the next morning. "Ah! I was going to give this to M. Combeferre, but you will do as well." She handed him an envelope. "Poor M. Combeferre – I'm sure my lodger can afford a nurse, or I should be happy to do any small tasks for him that he requires. It is not right that a young man should have to wait on his friends."

"Consider it practice for him, Mère Evers" Courfeyrac said absently, reading the curious form of address on the envelope. "He usually only gets to play with cadavers. '_For the attention of the Friends of M. Enjolras'_? This was delivered here, was it, to Enjolras' address – and yet it is not for he himself?"

"Odd, yes," agreed Evers. "A boy gave it to the porter early this morning. He said he'd call back at noon for an answer, should there be one." She leaned in as he opened it, and Courfeyrac turned away from her curious eyes as he broke the seal.

"Thank you – I'm sure I can count myself among Enjolras' select group of friends." He scanned the message. Short and cryptic –

_Pardon this unusual form of approach. I have important information on the unusual accident M. Enjolras suffered while among the abased of the city. I should be very glad to impart this to his friends if they would be so good as to meet me at the Café Procope on Tuesday at 2.00 pm. _

_~ P __Guérande_

Well – a very abrupt form of address and sign-off indeed. He also noted the way in which the reference to the abaissé had been so crudely inserted as a signifier. It was an epistle that would not have seemed out of place in one of Courfeyrac's cheap novels. He would not have been surprised had it contained instructions to "tell no one" about the proposed meeting.

Still – what harm could there be in seeing someone in the middle of a café during the day? Some of their associates did rather enjoy novelistic trappings. Then again, so did some of the more obvious police informers. He did not recognise the name – or pseudonym – but it might mean something to Combeferre.

"Will there be a response for the boy when he calls?" Evers asked.

"Yes….yes, he may tell M. Guérande that I would would be pleased to fall in with the arrangement he suggests."

He had not reached the first landing when Evers was called again to the front door. She admitted a gentleman to the hall, and Courfeyrac caught the name "Enjolras" as part of the exchange. Turning, curious, he did not recognise the man who asked for his friend.

"Ah! M. Courfeyrac," Evers called up to him. "This gentleman has come to call on M. Enjolras".

Courfeyrac returned down the stairs. "Good day," he said politely, balancing his hat under one arm and extending a hand. "I'm a friend of Enjolras."

Trying to describe the visitor later to Bahorel, Courfeyrac realised he could hardly recall a single notable feature. The man might have been aged anywhere from his mid-thirties to a well-preserved sixty. His colouring seemed neither noticeably dark nor light, and his face was bland, smooth, and almost impossible to recall. "Useful in his line of work," Bahorel muttered.

"Gaudreau," the man said coolly. "Of the _Sûreté Nationale_."

Just that. His expression remained neutral as he observed Courfeyrac's reaction. Courfeyrac covered his own confusion, as he usually did when he sought to hide a reaction, with a broad smile.

"Ah – and you've come to call on M. Enjolras? I don't really know if he's up to receiving visitors. He had an unfortunate accident last week-"

"And it is about that which I wish to see him." Gaudreau's voice was just a hair's breadth sharper than when he had introduced himself. "Perhaps you know by now that your friend is not the only one who suffered a similar attack?"

"I-" Courfeyrac floundered a bit. What was it Enjolras had told him about conducting himself during an encounter with authorities? Do not appear to be avoiding pursuit. Do not conduct yourself as a fugitive. It seemed to work for Enjolras and had delivered him from more than one tight corner, but Courfeyrac rather found himself at a loss as to how it applied in his current situation. "I haven't seen him yet this morning, I'm afraid, but yesterday he wasn't too well at all. He is feverish -"

"I would prefer to see that for myself. And if he is not up to speaking with me, I should at least like to examine his wound. To see if I can detect any resemblence to the others."

Courfeyrac gave up. "He is being treated by one of my friends, a medical student," he explained, leading the way.

"And this is why you have not had Doctor Boucher oversee his further care?" Courfeyrac was startled – how much did Gaudreau know about what had happened to Enjolras?

"It did not seem necessary," he replied. "My friend is quite a way into his degree, and capable of carrying out the initial course of treatment outlined by Doctor Boucher. We also have another medical student assisting."

"A tight knit group of friends indeed," Gaudreau replied dryly.

Combeferre opened the door, his eyebrows drawing together at the sight of a stranger accompanying his friend. Courfeyrac exerted an effort in controlling his voice, slowing his words. He knew he was inclined to rapid patter when rattled. "Ah!– Combeferre, Enjolras has a visitor. This is M. Gaudreau, of the _Sûreté._ It seems he has heard of the incident last week and wishes to speak with Enjolras."

Combeferre, unruffled, extended a hand. "I'm afraid I don't know if Enjolras can answer many questions this morning, Monsieur. He seems to be suffering from a brain fever of some description and is very weak. He has only just fallen asleep, and I do not wish to wake him."

"A brain fever? Interesting. I have not seen that in the other victims."

"There are other victims?" Courfeyrac asked, barely stopping himself from adding "that lived" and so admitting his knowledge of the mysterious deaths in the city.

"Indeed. That is why the _Sûreté_ is involved. The injuries are not always the same and the location of the crimes has been quite disparate – everywhere from the heart of the city to the barrieres – but patterns are beginning to emerge. I have been speaking to medical men across Paris, and was most interested when Doctor Boucher told me had treated a student who seemed to show the marks of the attack. There have not been many who suffered the wounds who lived to tell about them."

"I don't think Enjolras can tell you much, either," Combeferre said smoothly. "I'm afraid he doesn't recall what happened at all. All we know is that he was assaulted in an alleyway off the Avenue Des Gobelins in Saint-Marcel. Some of our friends brought him back here, and when he awoke he could not describe his assailant."

"What was he doing in Saint-Marcel?"

Combeferre hesitated a moment, and Courfeyrac jumped in. "It was something of a lark, I'm afraid. We'd been to the theatre, you see, and on his way home he thought he'd seek out some more congenial company. I think he's seen some girls there in the past…"

"A bit out of his way to go looking for streetwalkers, was it not?"

"You never know what odd fancies we young men will take," Courfeyrac continued blithely, rather afraid to look at Combeferre's face. "I agree with you, of course, that the quality of the local merchandise is not what it could be elsewhere, but there's no accounting for taste. And the girls there do know some fancy tricks – apparently, so he's told me, there's one girl there who can do remarkable things with…well, never mind."

Gaudreau blinked, curled the corner of his lip, and asked if he might see M. Enjolras.

"This way," Combeferre said.

It took Courfeyrac a moment to adjust to the dimmer light in the shuttered room. Gaudreau, however, moved straight to the bedside where he struck a lucifer and lit one of the bedside candles. "Please light the lantern, if you do not wish to open the shutters and curtains," he instructed Combeferre – it was not a request.

As the light was held to his face, Enjolras muttered something that sounded harshly gutteral, but was – to Courfeyrac's relief – unintelligible. He turned his head from the light but did not open his eyes. The bandaged side of his neck was exposed. "Please remove the bandage," Gaudreau instructed. Combeferre moved to comply, slowly and with evident reluctance. Gaudreau straightened and stepped back slightly to allow Combeferre to work, all the time gazing unreadably at Enjolras's profile.

"Don't touch it!" Combeferre said sharply when Gaudreau reached out to the exposed injury. The agent did not look up, but held the light closer to the curious markings, bringing his face to within inches of the torn flesh and minutely examining the wound.

"It does somewhat resemble some of the others," he finally said. Before they could stop him, he had moved a hand to Enjolras' face and ran two fingers along his cheek, then rubbed the fingertips against his thumb. Enjolras turned his head back and his eyes half opened to reveal a confused, bloodshot gaze. Gaudreau seemed about to speak when the lids sunk down again. The agent straightened and turned to the other two men.

"Very curious about these attacks, you know. There are reports associated with them of young, well dressed strangers appearing in the more destitute quarters of the city. Not where one would usually expect them to be."

"So there are some accounts to go on?"

"Yes. Interesting that there are women involved. It seems they are quite remarkable in appearance – very pale, rather ostentatiously garbed…several are dark, but not all. A rather striking blond man was sighted near one of the assaults in Saint-Marceau."

"Ah." Courfeyrac said.

"Is there any motivation suggested for the attacks?" Combeferre, standing by the bed behind Gaurand, asked. "Robbery? There was nothing taken from M. Enjolras, but his assailants might have been disturbed."

"Robbery, yes. But there might be any number of reasons. Theft is but one motivation for crime – there are many others. Political agitators, for example – it is not unknown for Republican provocateurs to stir up unrest by claiming the authorities are indifferent to the situation of the poor and the workers, or even that the government and its agencies are the instigators of misfortune. It is not inconceivable," and here he smiled, "that the more extreme elements among them should go so far as to create an occasion for unrest themselves."

"Or it might be a madman," Combeferre said quietly.

"Yes. A lunatic. Or a group of lunatics. Who go about in fancy dress. A rather less likely scenario. Well, we shall see."

A few more questions, and Gaurand took his leave. They escorted him to the door to the outside hall.

"I shall need to question M. Enjolras when he is in a condition to answer. And I should be obliged if you would give me any information that comes to light." He handed a card to Combeferre. "I assume you have told me everything?"

"Indeed, yes." Combeferre's manner was assured. Gaurand turned to Courfeyrac.

"You are a student as well, M. Courfeyrac?" Courfeyrac nodded. "How many years in have you studied in Paris?"

"Almost six years, Monseuir."

"Six. And M. Enjolras the same?" Courfeyrac nodded. "And you show no inclination to graduate? Six years is a long time - for a law degree in particular."

How did he…?

"You know we perpetual students," Courfeyrac laughed. "I intend to drag it on for at least a decade."

"And M. Enjolras?"

"Oh, he's worse than me. Quite the despair of the School of Law. I don't think he'll be going up before the bar before he's managed to court every pretty girl in the on the Rue Saint-Jean-de-Beauvais and drunk the Voltaire dry."

Gaurand took his leave. Closing the door behind him, Combeferre leaned his back against it, head down, arms around his sides, shaking.

"It wasn't that bad surely –" Courfeyrac began, then realised. "You're laughing!"

Combeferre looked up. He was indeed laughing. "I apologise – " he said between chuckles. "I assure you – I'm not giving way to hysterics. It's just that…oh, this is so absurd! The _Sûreté_ have come to call on Enjolras! They actually entertained the possiblitity, however remotely, that he might be behind these attacks – did you see Guarande check his cheek for powder or paint, to see if his pallor might not be faked? And you…you turn him into the greatest student rake in the Sorbonne's long and illustrous history of rakes. Oh, Courfeyrac – I wonder if Enjolras will credit it when he wakes! I'm almost glad I had to give him laudanum just before you arrived so that he would finally sleep."

"It…well, it was quite funny," Courfeyrac had to concede. "Did I lay on the drinking and whoring too thickly?" Combeferre could only shake his head. "I wonder if there really is a handsome blond man involved in the attacks going on across the city? Or if he was trying to rattle us?"

"Well, now we know that Grantaire was correct about the spate of deaths. I admit, I half thought that he might be exagerating something he heard through an intoxicated haze."

"And what about the even darker rumours that go alongside the attacks?"

"Gaurand didn't seem to think anything unearthly was going on. Although he would hardly let us know if he did. As I told you before, I know the morgue attendants myself. They have a macarbre sense of humour…they love to shock young journalists chasing their first story by abruptly unveiling the body of the most corrupted corpse on the slabs. I saw them do it with one fished out of the river after it was finally rotten enough to work free of the crevasse or wherever it had lodged underwater. I wouldn't be surprised if they had exagerated for the benefit of their audience. Although…Feuilly and Bahorel have heard similar things on the streets."

"Yes," Courfeyrac added eagerly. "So there could be something at the bottom of it."

"Mmm." Combeferre said thoughtfully. "You know, I've been considering all of that – I wonder if perhaps Enjolras heard the rumours as well. He keeps a close ear to the ground. If he did hear stories about a series of murders and the superstitious rumours gaining currency in the wake of the attacks, it might explain why in his weakened state he is harbouring delusions of pursuit by an unnatural monster."

"And the other possibility?" Courfeyrac asked.

"That a demon is walking through walls and stealing his blood in the middle of the night?"

"There might be other ways he – it – could gain access."

"How? We'd all have to be under a spell. His doors are locked, he has hardly stepped outside in nearly a week except once in my company, and he has rarely been unattended since the attack. I won't discount the possibility of another agency, but until I see some more proof of it, I will assume that his ailment is not supernatural in nature."

Courfeyrac seemed hardly reassured. "I suppose you're correct," he said doubtfully.

"I may need to take those novels that are sitting alongside your legal tomes away from you, Courfeyrac. Natural world first before we look to the supernatural. But, if it makes you feel any better, Professor Rollin will be at the Sorbonne tomorrow for his lecture. I'll see if I can get Joly to look after Enjolras in the afternoon and will try to gain his ear for a word." Courfeyrac looked at his friend blankly.

"Rollin?"

Combeferre sighed. "You really don't intend to sit for your bar examinations any time soon, do you? Although given you can't always recall your own instructors it is perhaps too much for me to expect you to know other leading academic lights. Rollin is a lecturer in natural philosophy, and is well known for his expertise in matters metaphysical. Surely you've heard Prouvaire talk about him."

"Ah!" Courfeyrac seemed happier. "Well, not all of us can be on the same casually intimate basis with our professors as you."

"No. I imagine yours would rather cringe at the prospect."

"You insult me, my good friend. I'm on excellent terms with my instructors. We understand each other. Now, look at this note." Courfeyrac showed him the message from Guérande"

"The name looks vaguely familiar," Combeferre said. "Something literary. Probably not the same man. Do you intend to go?"

"I might as well – I wonder if perhaps Enjolras' illness is merely an excuse, and it's actually the ABC he wants to talk about."

"I'd go with you, but I'll have to try and catch Rollin tomorrow. I'll ask Joly to stay with Enjolras if you're going to be out. Now, perhaps you could go and see if you can spread the word among the ABC that the _Sûreté_ are curious about something other than our latest pamphlet? Do you think you'd know if you were followed?"

"Of course!"

"Tell me – what colour was Gaudreau's hair?"

Courfeyrac opened his mouth with confidence, then shut it abruptly. He hadn't an idea.

"That was perhaps an unfair question – you'd be more likely to remember his waistcoat pattern. But just keep your eyes open – don't go straight to the Musain to look for them, either. Try some of their other haunts."

Courfeyrac agreed. "I'll see if I can't send someone around tonight to sit up with Enjolras."

* * *

"But my dear Combeferre, it is of no moment at all that I should stay tonight with Enjolras!" Prouvaire exclaimed. At Courfeyrac's suggestion, he had called in to see if something could be done for Combeferre. "I haven't seen you looking so tattered around the edges since that typhus outbreak". Combeferre rubbed a hand over his unshaven chin.

"I should probably ask Joly…"

"Why not me? Does he need medicine? I can be trusted to dose him, at least. I saw Joly this morning and he was complaining of hay fever and a headache."

"Courfeyrac could –"

"I'll become offended in a moment."

Combeferre finally held up his hands, palms outward, in defeat.

"I don't know what he'll be like tonight, I'm afraid. He didn't sleep until this morning, and has been asleep most of today. I'm concerned he may be more restless tonight." He went ahead of Prouvaire into the bedroom, lowering his voice and passing a hand over Enjolras' forehead. Prouvaire, his eyes adjusting to the dim lighting, stood at the food of the bed.

"His colour seems –" he paused. He was going to suggest it was better than when Prouvaire had last seen him, but was not that flush in the cheeks rather hectic? And his breathing sounded terrible.

"His colour is a bit high," Combeferre said. "He wasn't too well yesterday I'm afraid – must have been out of bed at some stage, and had his bedclothes in frightful disorder. I'll leave you a dose of laudanum – but only use it precisely to measure, and only if needed. You know how to mix it with water?" Prouvaire nodded, and Combeferre jotted down the number of drops to be administered. "Don't give it to him unless he becomes unduly…agitated. You won't need to do it, I'm sure. I'll be right next door, so you can wake me." Combeferre hesitated, thinking. "I'm not entirely sure I shouldn't be sitting up with him -"

"Don't be absurd."

"Just be aware," Combeferre said, "that he seems to have a touch of brain fever." The lie – if it was a lie - was becoming easier, serving as the most convenient catch-all explanation. "He has been uttering some strange things in his delirium."

"I understand."

"Don't take anything he says to heart – "

"Combeferre!"

"Well…I'm sure you'll pass a dull night of it." His tone was a little dubious. "Pull the chair back and set up a shade on the other side of the lamp if you want to read – he's a bit sensitive to the light at the moment."

Prouvaire nodded, understanding, and made a few adjustments to the lamp, saying a softly spoken goodnight to Combeferre. Combeferre lingered at the door, still hesitating, so Prouvaire fussed with the cushion and made a show of making himself comfortable before taking his seat. When he looked up, Combeferre had gone.

He set the third volume of D'Aubigne's _Histoire universelle _on his lap, but it sat unopened as he contemplated Enjoras's sleeping features. The faint light had given his friend an appearance even more sculptural than ever, but his colouring seemed artificial, like a wax doll. Almost a perfect approximation of living flesh, but a tint here was just a shade too dark, and the pallor there was just a shade too light to be quite real. Against that waxen complexion, his hair looked like the gilded halo of a medieval saint's portrait. Beautiful, yes, but there was something uncanny in his appearance.

_The changes wrought by illness upon our features_, thought Prouvaire. In this case, they were not what were to be expected. Enjolras, rather than showing the ravages of sickness, had only increased his measure of beauty. He briefly considered possible poetic treatments of the subject, but thinking upon it he realised with some surprise that the topic was not one that really attracted him. That, in fact, there was something in that unnatural beauty that he recoiled from, in approximately the same measure as Enjolras's features in health and animation usually charmed him.

He could not reasonably explain it to himself, but the juxtaposition brought to mind the _momento mori_ tomb effigies that had long intrigued and horrified him, monuments to that fascinating medieval knowledge of the nearness of death in life - A _danse macabre_ that waited to sweep all before it. _Transi_ tombs seen in ancient churches had haunted his childhood imagination – a beautifully sculptured figure reclining above, and the same figure echoed as a rotting corpse below, worms writhing in the corruption.

Decay and dissolution seemed just beneath the surface of the dear familiar face of his friend, now rendered somehow unfamiliar. Refined and coldly beautiful, the idea of death breathed through all that loveliness.

Uncomfortable with his own thoughts, he turned to his book.

He must have dozed.

When he came to awareness and looked over to the bed, Enjolras was no longer sleeping. His face was now turned towards Prouvaire, one hand beside his head softly open, his eyes wide and seeming black, as much as the directed shading of the lamp enabled Prouvaire to see them.

"Enjolras?" he asked. Enjolras gazed at him steadily without blinking. He drew in his breath to ask again, but the words died unsaid. The air seemed to crackle with energy between him. An absurd thought passed through his mind – was this really Enjolras at all? There was no recognition at all in those black eyes, and their expression was not at all that which he knew.

Once the idea that this was not his friend who lay next to him presented itself, a profound conviction that it was not Enjolras descended with crushing certainty. With the knowledge came a shrinking fear of whatever it was that wore his friend's form. He felt his skin prickling with gooseflesh. He could not bring himself to speak, and not for all the love in the world could he have brought himself to touch the fine boned hand that lay open on the bed. It was beyond his physical capabilities to overcome this horror.

As the creeping terror threatened to overwhelm him, his gaze was caught by a small flicker of light, hardly more than a pinpoint, which seemed to spin in the air between them. Prouvaire refocused his eyes on the closer point – a mote of dust?

There was another, and another, and then a small swirl of them, slowly revolving, glinting in the light. He watched, fascinated by their rhythmic dance. Not motes of dust – stray pieces of moonlight, swaying and twisting and –

He was distantly aware that Enjolras was now sitting up in bed, still watching him, but he could not take his eyes from the hypnotic stars that rode the vortex, each one a world, each one infinite, narrowing his focus until they were all he saw and his eyes began to close. The dancing lights followed him into slumber.

* * *

Orssich stood by the bed, but Enjolras did not look at him – he sat up, head bowed, it would seem, to gaze at the mesmerised friend who sat deeply sleeping beside his bed. Orssich took Enjolras' chin between his fingers and turned the boy's face up to him. There was no resistance at all. Enjolras's dark eyes registered nothing – not terror, nor fear, nor desire. No recognition, no intelligence at all.

"You can't hide from me that way," he said softly, and clenched a fist in the dishevelled hair, wrenching his victim's head back. Bending down, his narrowed gaze bore straight into Enjolras' sight lines. He ripped his way into the boy's mind, prepared to annihilate any barriers and to destroy any resistance, trammelling and dominating any will he found there. He encountered none. There were no walls, no defences, because it seemed that Enjolras was not there at all – just a fragmented world like a shattered mirror in which he caught only distorted glimpses of himself in infinite nightmare guises. He tried to probe deeper, but found only his own broken reflection.

Frustrated, he withdrew. Enjolras still looked up at him, the back of his head cupped in Orssich's hand, with a blandly passive expression.

"I could kill your friend-" he gestured at the sleeping child contemptuously. "Imagine that, Enjolras. His blood slipping down my throat, warming my limbs."

No flicker of acknowledgement. His face remained relaxed, lips lightly closed, eyes open and indifferent. Enjolras might as well be a broken toy for all his response.

This was not right. Enjolras, by now, should be entirely receptive to his advances, desperate for his touch and craving his reality. Instead, he was…this.

Spitefully, desiring some sort of reaction, he withdrew his hand and used the back of it to strike Enjolras hard across the cheek. The boy's head remained turned aside as the blow had driven it until Orssich again took his chin and turned that blank face back to meet his own. Still nothing – Enjolras did not fight, and he did not succumb.

"I know you're still there." He said. "And I will find you."

He needed to speak with Irma. What had seemed a straight-drawn path had taken a winding turn.

* * *

Combeferre was dreaming.

As a child he had often experienced lucid dreams. They had been rarer in recent years, but he still occasionally knew that awareness in his dream state. So he knew now that he slept, and was not walking through a forest with Enjolras. It was night in the dreamscape, but the snow on the ground and branches reflected what light from the sky there was, causing a faintly eerie illumination around them. Their footfalls broke the hard crust of the snow's surface, and made each step more difficult.

"There will be guests at the house tonight," Enjolras told him.

"You are expecting visitors, then?" Combeferre asked. "We need to get out of the woods, in that case. It is a long journey."

Instead of quickening his pace, Enjolras stopped and turned to face him, his face cold in the moonlight.

"There will be guests," he repeated. Although his expression was distant, Combeferre could hear a tremor of fear in the tone. His eyes seemed to be trying to convey some darker import to the words.

From somewhere nearby, a wolf howled, to be answered by a surrounding chorus of unearthly cries.

"Enjolras, I think we had best be –"

And then he saw their silver eyes reflecting in the moonlit snow, dark shapes that gradually resolved themselves into grey and black fur and lowered heads. He was glad this was only a dream. He remembered stories of hungry wolves in the coldest winters, picking off travellers whose sleds became too slow on the snow choked roads. The lot of the unwary or unfortunate who found themselves on foot alone in the woods was not to be countenanced.

"Enjolras – "he repeated, looking over at his friend. But Enjolras was no longer at his side – he was approaching up to the largest, darkest wolf, footfalls muffled, slowly extending his hand.

"Don't!"

The animal snapped savagely, jaws fastening on the long white fingers. The sound Enjolras made was more a sob of grief than of pain. He did not withdraw his hand, and the wolf licked the blood that oozed from the wound. He fell to his knees in the snow, still with his fingers in the mouth of the terrifying animal. It bared its teeth and snarled even as it greedily lapped at the crimson fluid.

Combeferre, quelling his revulsion at the sight, wanting desperately to wake, found he could not. He tried to draw breath to speak, but a flash of light from a falling snowflake caught his eye. It gleamed more like ice than soft falling snow. As did those that followed. He watched, mesmerised, as they swirled in eddies, obscuring his friend and finally the dream itself. He did not wake, but fell into deeper dreamless slumbers.

* * *

"Irma, I need –"

"Back so late!" sighed a voice in his ear. Orssich closed his eyes in irritation as an arm slid around him from behind and a fair head leaded over his shoulder to kiss him on the cheek, a lean body pressing against his back. Irma, reclining lazily on a chaise, watched them with amusement.

"Oscar," he steeled himself to a smile, turning and gently touching the boy's cheek. Mazamette's blue eyes were reproachful, his hand stroking the silk of Orssich's waistcoat and tracing the outlines of the buttons. "How are you this evening, petit?"

Oscar did not offer his charming smile with his mouth full of small, white, perfectly formed teeth and delicately pointed canines. He pouted in what he no doubt thought was an equally charming way, but which Orssich was beginning to find a not a little tedious.

"You promised me that we would hunt together. And yet I have hardly seen you in weeks."

"You know I have not had the time. Nor have you."

"Ah yes – you've been off pursuing that student. And leaving me to seduce and rob those who I could. I'm rather tired of being relegated to the company of Juan-José and Marfa, and the pursuit of largesse is beginning to feel almost like work." He flung himself on a chair, crossing his legs and looking up at Orssich from under long fair lashes. Orssich held his gaze, so he dropped his own, sucking in his full lower lip, and picked up a bird cage music box from the table next to him. His long fingers wound the key, releasing the tinkling notes. The house was full of these curious automatons, legacy of a collecting fad of the last century. He watched the slightly jerky movements of the little bird in the cage, its tiny wings flapping slowly and beak moving in mimicry of a living songbird.

"I thought you enjoyed exercising your talent for charming and theiving," Orssich said. Oscar truly was very pretty, and could be rather good company – but so needy sometimes, so dependent on being petted and admired.

"Sometimes, yes" Oscar admitted, putting down the automaton. "But you've no idea how tiring it is to be around these bourgeouis. It is not like it was once – they're more suspicious than ever of titles. Oh, some still love the aristocracy and all our manners and graces. But there are so many pseudo-nobles around Paris now…why, I've almost been accused to my face of having lied about or misappropriated my title!"

"But you did misappropriate your title, my little marquis," Oscar responded, amused in spite of his irritation. "You have no right to the Mazamette estate or titles – the land and money passed to you only by legal chicanery and a little bit of bloodletting. It still requires some legal finessing to hold the lands through the generations."

"My blood is of an antiquity many times removed from theirs – the bon ton these days is full of newly minted titles, the ink hardly dry on the decrees that proclaim them." Oscar said hotly, abandoning his air of languid elegance.

"Now then, child." He stood beside the chair, and put his fingers out to gently caress the bright curls. "Soon. I have a bal masque to attend – would you wish to accompany me to that?"

Mazamette looked up with his quick smile, radiance returned. "We two?" he asked eagerly. "Not the others?"

"Just you."

Sunlight was restored.

"Now, run along, little marquis. I need to speak with Irma."

Oscar stood and kissed him again, this time slowly, pressing his red lips to Orssich's own. His blue eyes shone happily into Orssich's for a moment, and he left, shutting the great gilded doors of the salon behind him.

Irma had watched the entire scene in silent amusement.

"And how will your little marquis respond when he sees your newest conquest?" she asked. "If you must drive a matched pair, perhaps it might have been better to go for a mare? Unless you take them for two geldings who will pull well in harnass together."

"I admit – I hadn't really thought about Oscar."

"You seem to hardly think of him at all, these days. Is the sheen finally off that particular toy? God knows, you've gone through enough lovely blonds between when you found him and now with your stormy young student. That girl you stalked for weeks, gaining entrée into her household. I still haven't forgiven you for precipitating that particular rapid departure from Paris to avoid the ensuring scandal. Did you have to kill a fourteen year old in her own bed, leaving the body to be discovered? And was it not rather excessive to slaughter her maid and aunt as well?"

"We were almost ready to depart Paris anyway," he argued. "I thought that, as we were leaving for a spell, I might as well give myself a parting gift. And ah – she was lovely." Sky blue eyes and transluscent skin with soft, fine gold hair.

"Well, we shall probably be departing Paris again soon." She shook her head. "Marfa. Marfa is terribly lazy – she kills with abandon and she never covers her trail. Not that you're helping matters. Why is that student not dead, either to sleep forever or to rise at our beckoning?"

"Ah…well, things have gone somewhat…"

"Awry?"

"Not quite as they did with Oscar when he took the blessing. This Enjolras – he fights very hard."

"Immune to your charms? He should be yours to mould as you will by now." Irma sat up straighter. "Have the changes begun?"

"In his physical body, yes. Not as fast as they should, though. A faint, reluctant stirring. And I admit, his mind eludes me."

"Be precise. Is he completely immune to your power?"

"Not at all. I can mesmerise him, yes. But – there is something wrong with his mind. I think he hides – he seems to recoil so absolutely from my presence in his thoughts, that it drives him mad." He thought of those terrible shards he saw in Enjolras' mind.

"If he is mad, then you have no choice but to kill him. If you try to force him to consume your blood and he dies in madness, the creature he will become will be a mindless revenant, a leech in human form that seeks only animal warmth and kills without skill or discernement. Of lower sentience even than a wolf, a mind given over wholly to death, insane with bloodlust.

"He is not mad in that sense," Orrisch said, hastily going back on his words. "I am certain he is still in there. But the more I bury into his thougths, the more he reacts to me in this way. It is only when I retreat at all that he returns to himself. I can't tell if there is something additional to his mental composition that allows this, or if he somehow incomplete and thus able to evade me."

Irma was thoughtful. "I have encountered such ones before. Not many, but they do exist. It is better to destroy them than to try to make them yield. The game is not worth the candle."

"In this case, I think it is. He's there, Irma – he's almost within my reach. I have but to breach that wall and I know all that ferocious self-will shall be won completely to me – to us."

"If he reacts so adversely as to seem to lose his mind when you touch it, then you need to lift your control completely. And then hope that he is so weak and bewildered when he returns to himself that your passionate certainty may subsume him."

"If I release him, he'll be able to tell his friends what is happening to him."

"Not if he isn't with them," she smiled. "I'll arrange it. Though this whole escapade might be our farewell to Paris for a while.."

"Thank you, a thousand times!"

"What an appearance you'd make at that bal masque, with Enjolras on one side and Mazamette on the other."

"I know it," he said merrily, seeing it complete.

"But after this, no more blonds for your collection. Don't take it in to your head to drive a span of four."


	8. Chapter 8 Darkest before the Dawn

A/N: Thanks to TheHighestPie, as ever, for her beautiful betawork, and also to MmeBahorel for using her historical expertise to make specific suggestions.

I feel an apology is in order for the number of errors that have slipped through in previous chapters. Weeding them out is an ongoing task, and I hope to have another go at it in the near future.

* * *

**Chapter 8 - Darkest Before the Dawn**

_**The story of the Vampyre is founded on an opinion or report which prevailed in Hungary, and several parts of Germany, towards the beginning of the last century:--It was then asserted, that, in several places, dead persons had been known to leave their graves, and, by night, to revisit the habitations of their friends; whom, by suckosity, they drained of their blood as they slept. The person thus phlebotomised was sure to become a Vampyre in their turn; and if it had not been for a lucky thought of the clergy, who ingeniously recommended staking them in their graves, we should by this time have had a greater swarm of blood-suckers than we have at present, numerous as they are.**_

**The Vampyre,**_** John Stagg, 1812**_

* * *

Prouvaire was dreaming of great dark wings that beat in the void, surrounded by swirling pinpoints of light like the bioluminescence of the oceans. He had seen that living light one night from a boat, leaning over the side and staring below the surface of an oily-calm sea. There had been stars above and stars below, and he had felt – not for the first time – the grandeur of the infinite, as if he was suspended among galaxies.

Courfeyrac's voice, then, was a rather unwelcome intrusion, calling his name as he emerged from a syrupy sleep that clung to his eyelids and his limbs, imbuing both with heaviness.

"Go away!" he muttered.

"Prouvaire! If you don't wake up right now, I'm going to pour an entire pitcher full of water over your head."

There was a murmured voice somewhere off to the side, demurring. That would be Combeferre.

Prouvaire smiled and finally raised his eyelids, flinching from the bright sunlight that streamed into the room.

"Good morning!" he managed with a reasonable approximation of cheerfulness. He felt rather as if he'd been eating hashish, and he certainly hadn't done that – not last night, at least. Or he thought not. Blinking helped bring Courfeyrac's face into better focus, looming in over him and looking rather anxious. He hadn't even taken off his hat. Far too excitable was Courfeyrac. "You're up and about uncharacteristically early."

"Prouvaire, it's nearly eleven o'clock! Where is Enjolras?"

"What?" Prouvaire started into full wakefulness. Turning, he gazed open-mouthed at the bed. It was barely disturbed, as if it had hardly been laid in, and was most conspicuously empty.

"I...what…I don't know!" Prouvaire shook his head. "He was asleep when I saw him last." Or – wait, was that right? Hadn't there been something else?

"I'm going to find him," Courfeyrac straightened. Combeferre moved in front of the door.

"Let us think about this," Combeferre said soothingly.

"God knows where he's got to while you two have been sleeping!" Courfeyrac snapped. "You know he's not in his…" he stopped and slid a sideways look at Prouvaire. "He's not well enough to be out in the streets."

"And where do you propose we look for him?" Combeferre asked. Courfeyrac opened his mouth, and then shut it rapidly. "Exactly. You don't know where to begin. Let us think this through."

"I don't understand," Prouvaire said, bewildered. "Is he well enough to be up and about?"

"I don't know," sighed Combeferre. "I suspect not. Courfeyrac came here this morning and found him gone and both of us – er – rather deeply asleep."

"So we need to find him?"

Combeferre nodded. "His…delirium might lead him to act in a rather odd manner."

"I think all his morning coats are still here" said Courfeyrac from the armoire. "There a gap in his line up of footwear."

"You keep track of his coats?" Combeferre asked, somewhat amazed.

"Well, one does notice these things. He alternates between four of them. One is quite three seasons old, and I keep telling him he needs to change it. They might all be dark, but lapel widths do make a difference, you know, and as to his cravats…"

"Courfeyrac!"

"Sorry, nerves. I'm babbling. What if he starts – er – that delirious talk again? Might he not be picked up as a madman or a drunk?"

Combeferre shuddered. "If we're fortunate, they'll assume he's just another student who has been drinking too much cheap _vin de table_ that's probably made of real table." The gendarmes only cared about whatever they could define as "disturbing the peace" - and confronting Enjolras out of concern for his own safety could not fail to result in that definition.

"Perhaps we could ask the concierge or porter if they saw him go out?" Prouvaire asked. Courfeyrac nodded eagerly.

"Could you do that, Prouvaire?"

Prouvaire looked at the two friends with narrowed eyes. Something was certainly going on that they were not telling him. At a shrewd guess, Enjolras was probably rather worse off than they were trying to lead him to believe.

Courfeyrac and Combeferre waited until Prouvaire was out of the room.

"Well, what do we do? Where do we begin?" Courfeyrac asked.

"Where would Enjolras go?" Combeferre pondered aloud.

"If he were in his right mind?" Courfeyrac asked impatiently. "He'd have lectures this morning, I think…yes, Tuesday. Or he'd go to the Musain. Wait, no – not at this time of day. He takes coffee at the – Combeferre, this is hopeless. He could be anywhere. What if the police apprehend him and assume he's riotously intoxicated?"

"He was quiet most of yesterday." Combeferre tried to be reassuring.

"Yes, but he doesn't have a coat or hat – no waistcoat either, I'd lay odds. At least his nightshirt is still here, so we know he's not wandering around in that."

"He must have put on the clothes he was wearing the other day." Combeferre deduced. "I hadn't sent out his laundry."

"Well, at least he's got something on. Might start a new fashion for shirtsleeves as morning wear. God, Combeferre, what are we going to do? Even if he does get picked up by the police and they're inclined to look on him as a benignly drunk student, what's to say he doesn't react badly to _them_ if he's accosted?"

"Don't borrow trouble. We've enough of it to be going on with. Ah, Prouvaire –"

The poet had returned.

"He went out well over an hour ago – the porter saw him leave. Apparently in a disreputable state of dress, but he seemed quiet enough." Prouvaire must be concerned, Courfeyrac noted even in his distraction – he hadn't tagged on a comment about the bourgeois preoccupation with respectable attire, and why it was to be applauded that Enjolras was finally challenging such assumptions. "The porter was frustratingly but understandably inattentive as to which direction he took, but did seem to think it was possibly east, which could mean the Sorbonne or the Luxembourg."

"Aha! Right, let's get after him. At least he'll cut a more noticeable figure than usual in his state of undress – someone might have seen him pass by." Combeferre said. "Wait, Prouvaire – can you do something for me? Go and find Joly. He was going to call around this afternoon anyway – he'll be working in the anatomy department today. Send him back here – this is where we'll meet." Prouvaire knew his way around the anatomy rooms quite well, Combeferre knew – he was not one to let slide a pretext for visiting Joly or Combeferre in an environment where so many interesting _momento mori_ were lying around.

It proved easier than they had hoped to track their errant friend. A cryer on the corner had seen him, and a forward young maid polishing the brass hinges and knocker on a front door had noticed him pass ("La! He must have had a night of it – some girl is very lucky indeed!"). There were enough people to point them in the right direction, which they soon narrowed down as the Luxembourg.

"Perhaps he had our appointment there the other day in mind?" Courfeyrac wondered, and then accosted a water seller to see if he had seen a young man in his shirt sleeves.

"Yes, I saw him. You should be keeping a better eye on your friends, you young men – he looked as sick as a dog." They exchanged alarmed glances. "Indecent how he was dressed, too – although who knows what fads you_ flâneurs_ will take into your heads these days."

"Did he say anything to you?"

"No, he was too busy talking to whatever lurched out of the absinthe bottle at him – or I'll wager that's what it was. I'd put him straight to bed if I were you boys."

"Which way?"

"Towards the upper terrace, I'd judge."

He was easily spotted at a distance, sitting on a bench. It was fortunate he hadn't been thrown out of the Gardens. Courfeyrac had sometimes thought him out of place with his sober attire verging on severe in the midst of the more colourful associates or the working men. The last time he had seen Enjolras in a public place in indecorous dress had been on the barricades of July. Then, even with a lack of coat and cravat, bareheaded and with his sleeves rolled up, he had moved with an ease and confidence that had made his appearance perfectly natural. But this – the white of his untucked shirt seemed harshly bright in the morning sun, with no coat or waistcoat to obscure it. He was bent over, face in his hands, a huddled and disconsolate figure.

"Enjolras?" Combeferre asked softly on approach, touching his shoulder. There was no response, so he gave a gentle shake. Enjolras, eyes closed, turned his face up response to the voice. At the same time Courfeyrac observed that the back of his neck, where the bandage did not obscure the skin, was blistered. Although a bright day it was not yet noon, yet the skin looked as if it had been sunburned in the harshest summer day.

Courfeyrac drew in a sharp breath as Enjolras opened his eyes. They were so bloodshot and red rimmed that for a moment he thought they were bleeding. The blue stood out in startling contrast.

"Are you alright?" Combeferre asked, and Courfeyrac was relieved at his utter stillness and calm – it enabled Courfeyrac to ground himself and restrain the anxious questions that threatened to spill over. Enjolras nodded slowly.

"I wanted to be in the sunlight. But…it feels wrong. The light is wrong."

Combeferre seated himself beside his friend and examined the back of his hands, where the fair skin had blistered like the neck. His face too, particularly the nose and chin – every part of exposed skin.

"What are those marks?" Courfeyrac asked in Combeferre's ear, who shook his head in response. It wasn't clear if he didn't know or didn't care to say. Courfeyrac hoped it wasn't contagious.

"Shall we go back now?" the medical student asked Enjolras gently. "Can you rise?"

"I don't think they can touch us in the daylight," Enjolras continued as though Combferre had not spoken. "But my mind is still not my own." He closed his eyes as if the sun pained him. It probably did, Courfeyrac thought. He seemed extraordinarily photosensitive. He took off his own hat and placed it on his friend's head. Hopefully the brim would shade him, even if only slightly.

"Enjolras, come. We need to get you back to your rooms," Combeferre said more firmly.

"I had to escape, you see." The sick man explained. "I cannot remain there and wait for him! At least here, if I burn, I burn in the light. Not in his foul embrace." And he gave a full bodied shudder.

"Take his other arm," Combeferre ordered. Courfeyrac was startled – although he had been sitting in the morning sun, he could feel the cold of Enjolras's skin through the fine muslin of his shirt. He took off his own tailcoat and draped it over his shoulders – that would serve the dual purpose of warming him and helping to protect that painful looking neck. They pulled him to his feet, and he did not resist, seeming hardly aware they were there.

The journey back had a certain nightmarish quality, with Enjolras stumbling between them, head slumped forward. Courfeyrac's hat fell off his head twice, and his voice was beginning to take on the desperate tones they had heard before, paying no heed to attempts to quieten him. "Small consolation that anyone who sees us will think he's dead drunk," thought Courfeyrac grimly. "And think of what rumours that would start in the School of Law." Combeferre kept up a cheerful stream of small talk, ignoring his friend's startling observations on the place of souls and the monsters that hunt them.

Joly and Prouvaire were waiting in the Concierge's reception room when they arrived, Prouvaire's face registering startled dismay at the state of their chief. Joly's expression was more obscure, but Courfeyrac thought he caught a knowing look in his eyes, the hint of a suspicion confirmed. _And what a sight we must be_, thought Courfeyrac. Although he was relieved that Enjolras' breathing had slowed once they were indoors, their friend leaned almost his full weight on them as they walked up the stairs. His distress seemed to be increasing.

Courfeyrac left the medical students to undress Enjolras and put him to bed – he had sometimes deposited friends in their beds when they were more intoxicated than he, but had never felt the need to do more than slide their boots off if he were feeling in a particularly generous mood - and took Prouvaire into the sitting room. He closed the door to Enjolras' bedroom behind him and leaned against it, looking at the ceiling with a sigh.

"I'm not a fool, Courfeyrac – I know something is wrong here, and badly wrong," Prouvaire said.

"God, I could use a drink." Courfeyrac said. "Spirits. Although I suppose the only thing I'm likely to find here would be in Joly's medicine bag. Do you think the Concierge is a secret tippler? Someone as pious as Madame Evers must have a secret stash of hard stuff. I'd even take gin."

"What's happening? He sounds like he has a fever."

Courfeyrac thought of all the ideas coalescing in his head, his thus far mostly unvoiced fears and half notions barely articulated to Combeferre.

"We don't know yet," he hedged. "But look, can you stay here and help out our Asclepiosian representatives? I have to meet someone."

Prouvaire looked at him suspiciously, clearly thinking that Courfeyrac might have a game of dominoes lined up for the afternoon.

"It's important, Prouvaire. I'll be back this evening."

"I think sometimes that we've become far too accustomed to this secret society business!" Prouvaire burst out. "Enjolras has some mysterious illness, and you're off to meetings with an air that would suit a stage adaptation of one of those novels you're always reading. Joly won't answer my questions – and it's not like him to miss a chance to talk medical ailments - and even Combeferre has an attitude of concealment…I thought we were supposed to trust each other absolutely?"

"Because if this turns out to be a wild goose chase, I'll feel like a damned fool. Now please – just help Joly and Combeferre. I'll see you tonight."

He thought the better of knocking on the door to Enjolras' room to see what was happening in the sick chamber.

* * *

Enjolras had been quietly obedient as they slipped off his boots (no hose, Combeferre noted, and so he had a few blisters on his heels as well) and clothes and pulled his night shirt over his head. There was a pattern of bruises across his upper body, extending down his arms, and even on one knee. They had faded to a yellow tinge, and he wondered how many days old they were. He lay with his eyes closed as his friends quickly examined him. The wound on the neck was scabbing over again – it had now faded into two precise holes, the edges of which seemed slightly abraded, but otherwise the rest of the injury seemed to have healed.

"It's curious," Joly observed, "I don't think I've seen blisters fade so soon. Look at his skin – I could have sworn that was a bad case of sunburn. It almost looked like a steam burn it was so bad on the back of his neck. And yet they've all but gone, and the skin has nearly resumed its pallor."

"It rather looks like he has come into contact with some irritant. I wonder if-" he Combeferre broke off "-his pulse and respirations are increasing," he said, holding his friend's wrist. "Enjolras – can you hear me?"

When Enjolras opened his eyes, there was a forceful terror contorting his features. "You brought me back into the dark!" he cried.

* * *

"Please…do you not see I am stalked by one who is worse than Empusa? That my blood now flows in his dead, dry veins, and that I am never free? Sleeping or awake, it is his dead eyes and livid, hateful face that I see…no, not livid…it is clothed in false beauty, it hides the rankness of death behind red lips and the hectic flush of fevered cheeks…his breath brings death and his touch is cold."

There were other voices in the room, but they were ephemeral beside the hungry dark. He felt his lips crack, and heaviness as if his limbs were weighted. His eyes might be open, but it seemed impossible to tell what was real around him, with the forms in the room far less present than the vivid red and the sharp teeth that waited for him.

"He has journeyed with Alharazed on the Black Pilgrimage…they have followed the path to Chorazin, and there they made homage to the Prince…oh, the Prince aëris!"

The incubus was on his chest, pressing down and suffocating him, even when it was not in the room. The bed clothes were transformed into mountains, and he himself a frozen and lost traveller in a bleak landscape. Shapeless forms loomed over his darkened vision.

"Do you not see him in the corner, my friends…he waits with eyes of silver, this one who consorts with Oreios and Argios?"

"…_delirium...he needs…but he won't sleep like this…"_

"He has a certain power over your eyes!" Enjolras tried desperately to explain. "…look again, my friends…be sure he does not stalk you, too! Kin to Shabriri….he walks at Samael's right hand, he is his avatar. He will drink your blood, he will watch the life run out of you…"

He had to remain in this world. More than his life was at stake. More than that of his friends. This was the horror of predatory intent made manifest, the very personification of the evil that preyed upon the wretched of the world. It thrived on innocence, it perverted everything it touched, and it was the seductive power of dissolution.

"_Enjolras?" _

He wanted to tell the voice on the far side of the abyss that he was still, in some way, aware. But his tongue moved as though choked with dust, and he could only gasp out the words born of terror.

And somewhere was that active, malevolent intelligence, humming in his mind, alien but entwined with his thoughts.

"Please…please, you must…ah, you must see it…you must speak of it, for I cannot…"

"…_not aware of us…heart rate too fast…"_

"_I do not wish to…"_

"…_cannot let this go on…"_

The voices rose and fell away from his bed and then he sensed a figure draw close. Although it was not the malevolent presence, he cringed back. He could feel the warm body that drew near, and it evoked terrifying images of blood on his lips, spurting into his mouth and spilling down his throat, bringing with it a sensual pleasure undreamed of. He felt a desire that was utter anathema.

And then there was a hand, shaking slightly, supporting his head, and a dim figure leaning over him whose features he could not see, and whose voice he thought he should know but did not. Something wet was held to his mouth, and he heard a distant admonition to drink, in a terrifying echo of the vision of blood. He tried to turn his head but the hand was firm. He opened his lips to speak, but then bitter liquid filled his mouth, and he swallowed hard. It hurt. There was an impression of a warm, comforting hand on his forehead…he was so cold. He felt a roiling in his belly, as if his body rejected the fluid, but then another kind of numbness overcame him and his consciousness melted away altogether. He did not welcome the dark, knowing that even in the deepest dreams he had no guarantee of respite.

Combeferre, his back turned towards Joly, lowered Enjolras' head to the pillow, then put his hand on his disturbed friend's shoulder for a few moments. The older student kept his face averted from Joly when he took Enjolras' wrist to ostensibly measure his pulse as the sick man's keening cries faded and his restless movement stilled. It struck Joly that Enjolras was never meant to be seen in this light, his face slack with a complete lack of energy and will. This could not be mistaken for sleep. They stood for a few minutes, listening to the harsh, rasping intakes of breath.

Joly laid a hand on Combeferre's arm, turning him from the bed. The strain was showing, his hair standing in stiff clumps where he had run his fingers through it. In spite of Courfeyrac's reminders to shave he still had a dark shadow across his chin. He sat down on one of the chairs, putting his head in his hands. More than tired, he looked exhausted.

"You've given him a heavy dose of morphine." It was not a question – Joly had seen the amount measured out. Combeferre nodded.

"He needs to sleep without these…dreams. Visions. Whatever it is that is so disturbing to him." He shook his head. Joly knew that Combeferre did not favour the use of drugs. "I…to have to use them on Enjolras, of all people…"

"Why 'of all people'?"

"He is the most clear minded of men. He allows nothing to cloud his vision. He does not even smoke – he told me once, when I asked why, that he had seen others become a slave to tobacco, and he would be a slave to nothing. And now…I've given him a heavy dose. I know he would not approve, but he must sleep. He's slipping away." Combeferre balled his hand into a fist and slammed it into the palm of his other hand.

"Combeferre…" Joly hesitated. This was not going to be an easy conversation. "I think we need to consider that Enjolras' condition might not be entirely due to…external factors."

Combeferre looked sharply up at that. "What do you mean?"

"I think we need to consider calling in an expert in mental alienation."

"You think he's mad."

"Listen to me," Joly began, sitting beside his friend, holding his gaze with determination. This was medicine, and on medicine Joly was on firm ground. "I know we don't want to consider this, but let us look at the facts. You yourself say he is slipping away. We can find no disease."

"He has the symptoms of anaemia," Combeferre countered. "And what of those blisters?"

"Would that account for the ravings? This obsession about being stalked by some great, undefinable evil? Tell me, does a sane man do that?"

"Enjolras is one of the sanest men I have ever met," Combeferre answered

"I would normally agree with you, my friend. But I think that the attack triggered something. Enjolras is a…singular being. You know what Esquirol wrote about the link between passion and madness. Surely it must have occurred to you that Enjolras' intense feelings about the Republic, to exclusion of all else, have something of the characteristics of a monomania?"

Combeferre made a noncommittal sound.

"In this he is not alone," Joly continued. "I think he exhibits it in the same sense a great artist or composer does. He has a genius for revolution. He sees it all, complete, in the same way a great painter does his subject, or a composer hears a symphony in his head."

"And what if there is some truth in what you say?" challenged Combeferre. "Do you suggest that his monomania has now turned into something else? Some sort of dark paranoia?"

"I do not know. Which is why we need to call in someone who specialises in this." Combeferre was shaking his head emphatically. "We have to do something!" Joly insisted. "His body can't heal because his mind torments him. Are you simply going to keep him drugged so deeply he doesn't hear or see the demons? How is that better than what I propose?"

"I just cannot help but feel there is something else happening here, Joly. Something we can't see."

"I think it's past time we wrote to his father to tell him what was going on."

Combeferre sat up violently.

"No, not that. You do not know M. Enjolras."

"Is he really so terrible? Look, he obviously cares something for his son – he supports him in Paris in his studies, and I have never heard Enjolras speak ill of him as a man, only of his politics. They might not be close, but surely his son – his only son – matters enough to him to seek out the best treatment."

"It's not that simple, Joly."

"Why is it not that simple? By what right to do we presume to keep his child's condition from him?"

"M. Enjolras is by no means a cruel or even an unkind man. He and Enjolras do not see eye to eye on many matters, of course, but having a son as a political activist he can tolerate. It causes him some minor embarrassment, but he dismisses it as a youthful folly and insists that Enjolras will one day become a respectable member of the Chamber of Deputies." Combeferre managed a wry grin. "Although what sort of politics he assumes Enjolras will adopt by that stage, I've never been able to determine. But this is something else. Having a son with a question over his sanity…" he hesitated before continuing.

"Joly, you think that I'm being unreasonable in not considering calling in a specialist. But there are reasons why to do so would do far more harm than good. Such an action would be unsupportable for Enjolras, and would cause tremendous difficulties with his father."

"I know that these things carry a stigma," Joly reassured. "But we're in the 19th century now, man! As a student of medicine, you know that attitudes are changing. Our latest medical work and classifications suggest that the distinctions between _le physique_ and _le moral_ are not what we once thought they were, and that diseases of the mind, far from being a symptom of moral decrepitude, are in fact linked to physical illness of the body. Pinel suggests that if we can address disturbances of the animal economy, we can treat the illnesses of the mind."

Combeferre was deeply thoughtful.

"There is more to it still," he finally answered. "And one does not betray the confidences of any man with ease of conscience – let alone a man as reserved as you know Enjolras to be."

"Speak to me, then, as one physician to another – not as a man or even as a friend."

"No, I will speak to you as both friend and colleague. None of this goes to the Amis – although I think Courfeyrac knows most of it."

"Agreed. Have there been episodes similar to this in Enjolras's past?" Joly guessed. Combeferre started.

"This? Absolutely not. Never. It is not Enjolras – it was his mother." He took up the story. "You know that Enjolras' mother is dead?" Joly nodded. "Enjolras' father owns a slew of textile factories. He made his fortune in the early years of the century, and found an accomplished, impoverished, titled émigré to marry. To look at Enjolras is to know her features – I've seen her portrait. The same beauty, only she was cast in a somewhat more ethereal mould.

"She must have looked utterly otherworldly, then" Joly said, hoping to elicit a smile from his friend. Combeferre gave the ghost of a nod, indicating he appreciate the effort.

"They had one child who lived, but there was another, born not quite three years after Enjolras. A child that was always ailing – he died at six months. Soon after that, she was incarcerated in a sanatorium…it was said she was mad."

Joly nodded, the picture becoming clearer.

"You would remember that case at the Necker – the mother who succeeding in drowning two of her three young children in a tub? I helped care for the third. The case was a terrible one – she was quite convinced, or said she was, that she was acting for their benefit. She had lost her husband in a factory accident, and could see no way in which she could continue to care for them."

"I remember it," Joly responded. He remembered Combeferre's desperate need to talk about the case with him, about the mother's madness.

"Enjolras was there as well. He had called in that day, and I…well, I could not help but speak of what I had just seen, of what could drive a mother to do that. He managed to manoeuvre me somehow into Courfeyrac's company, rightfully discerning that Courfeyrac was probably better able to provide immediate comfort. Later, when I was more composed, he sought to discuss her case with me. That is his way – to seek to understand, even if his response emphasises the intellectual and the logical."

"To my surprise, the conversation segued into talk of his mother. He discussed her circumstances with me – what little he knew, or remembered. He knows my family were aware of her case, and he wished my opinions on it, and to find out what I knew of her. He did not recall her, not really, but from what he had been told in fragments, she seemed to suffer deep melancholia. It was this overmastering melancholy that lead her to confine herself in her room and remain in her bed, even before the second boy died. She did not play with Enjolras after the other child was born – would not touch him, nor even visit the nursery. And she desired nothing to do with her husband, either. Enjolras said his father once expressed frustration at having a wife who seemed to lack the will and capacity to rise and dress, even with the help of her maid, although there was nothing wrong with her in body."

"I'm surprised that he did not content themselves with merely confining her in their home." Joly said calmly. "His father had enough money to arrange to manage her condition – he could have hired what nurses he needed to care for her."

"There was more to her condition." Combeferre explained. "And here we arrive at the nub of why we must not let word of Enjolras' condition reach his father. His mother had – well, strange ideas. She sometimes had episodes that seemed trancelike, and she spoke of fanciful things."

"Like Enjolras's outbursts of soul? Those curious transcendent revelations?"

"No, not like that at all. Quite the opposite, except that both involve elaborate imagery that one is not always entirely sure is intended as allegory. Her husband I understand she described as a monstrous flea, sucking the life from her. Her son, she called a changeling. M. Enjolras, desperate, consulted a well known physician. The doctor he brought in was one of those who see insanity as a manifestation of moral degeneracy. Her very paleness, her fragility, was a mark of her weak spiritual and moral character. This physician suggested her incarceration in a_maison de santé_, and M. Enjolras reluctantly agreed. She died a few months later.

"Monstrous hallucinations? Could this be hereditary?" Joly asked, shocked.

"No!" Combeferre said emphatically. "Enjolras has never shared any of the symptoms that characterised his mother's illness. If he is ever melancholy – and his tendency is to be reserved, not gloomy - it is because he has taken the burden of change upon his shoulders, knowing full well all that implies. He is never morbid. And of Madame Enjolras – her case was unusual. My own family thought her unusual, and her sadness was profound. They did not think her mad…but then, they never knew the worst of her delusions. Before the sorrow came on her, she was by turns a very clever, very charming woman, who suffered from a whimsical soul and overmasting grief with the loss of one of her children."

"You say she had these symptoms before the child's death?"

"The child was sickly. That is what triggered her decline."

"I understand why we do not tell his father what is happening," Joly said, "and I concur with you that this is a matter of unusual delicacy. But we have few options. What can we do?"

Combeferre had no answer.

* * *

Courfeyrac would feel quite the fool if his mysterious contact did not show up to this meeting. Prouvaire was right – clandestine meetings were the final touch needed to render the whole experience melodramatic in the extreme. Rightfully, though, they should happen some place more appropriate…the catacombs, for example. At midnight. With either a full moon or a thunderstorm raging outside for final measure. As it was, he was sipping coffee in the Café Procope, surrounded by foreign visitors determined to soak up the literary atmosphere of the far-famed coffee house (the ubiquitous presence of which was one reason he usually avoided the Café) and he was very unfashionably early. Fortunately, the writer of the note was as well.

"M. Courfeyrac? Thank you for agreeing to this meeting."

The speaker might have been in his mid thirties, and sported a rather half-hearted sort of moustache and a dreary sort of black wool tailcoat, although the notched collar did give it some mild flare. Not a terribly interesting looking individual to be playing these sorts of games. He was, however assured in his manner.

"Will you take coffee, M. Guérande?" Courfeyrac asked, signalling a waiter.

"Please." He put a parcel on the table. "And I do apologise for the manner of my introduction. One must be discreet – you know how it is. I'm a journalist and literary editor by profession."

"You said you have something to share with me regarding Enjolras?"

"Yes. I met your friend, Grantaire, at the Morgue. It seems he, like me, has an interest in recent events in Paris."

"The series of attacks."

"Precisely. I was there to look at the bodies, and joined him when he was drinking with the attendants. I'm afraid your friend is most indiscreet. He let slip that he knew a man, one Enjolras, who had similar marks on his neck. I am hoping that the attendants did not take note and mention this to the police."

"Why should it matter if they did?" Courfeyrac asked, pretending guilelesness.

"I told you I'm a journalist. I know of Enjolras, Courfeyrac. He and I have friends and associates in common. I've heard him speak. And I think I would be very much remiss in my guessing if I did not suppose that there are activities he is involved in that he would prefer were not brought to the attention of the Sûreté, and render him desirous of avoiding their gaze altogether."

If this was a trap, Courfeyrac would not be drawn in.

"I'm certain that the correct action would be for us to tell the police," he said with a smile.

"Quite right. Good response. Well, let us pretend then that you and Enjolras have nothing to hide. I'm not so sure this is a story the police would be willing to believe – or, if they were, they might have reservations about allowing a man who is under the sway of the undead to wander the streets."

Courfeyrac nearly dropped his cup. He had not expected to have his own half-formed throughts on the cause of his friend's illness thrown in his face so abruptly – not sitting here in a warm café, in broad daylight, with the sound of an omnibus rattling past on the rue de l'Ancienne Comédie heard over the hum of chatter around them.

"Yes, you heard me. The undead. And your friend is a victim."

There was a brief pause as the waiter brought Guérande his coffee. Courfeyrac leaned forward.

"How do you know…?" he asked in a low tone.

"Then you do not deny it? Good. Let me tell you a story, then. You have heard of the English poet, Lord Byron, I imagine?" Courfeyrac nodded, thinking of Feuilly's enthusiasm for his efforts in Greece and Bahorel and Prouvaire's passion for his poetry and theatrical manner of living. "Some four years ago, not long after his death, I was engaged in editing some of his papers for a French edition of his works. I travelled to England, in search of sources, and while there became aware that he had engaged a personal physician, one Dr John Polidori, during his travels through Europe in 1816. Dr Polidori died in 1821 but I was able to trace a sister, Charlotte, who had transcribed a copy of his diary."

"It was evident to me upon reading the transcript that passages were heavily edited or deleted – well, the literary editor in me might have been sensitive to why this might be so, particularly for one who had accompanied the notorious Lord Byron on his adventures, but the journalist's instincts were also aroused with curiousity. Charlotte told me that she had destroyed the original, but I was able to find another sibling, Frances. John had been her favourite brother. She made a second copy – and this one was intact."

He laid his hand on the parcel that was on the table.

"And there is something in there that you think would shed light on the case of my friend?" Courfeyrac asked eagerly. Guérande smiled.

"It is all in there. Have you heard of a play by Nodier called _Le Vampire_?"

Courfeyrac's eyebrows lifted. "Yes." He nodded.

"It is based on a story by Polidori that was published in 1819, titled _The Vampyre_. You will find a copy included with the duplicate of the manuscript extracts, but it is the manuscript that will furnish you with the most information. It contains Polidori's notes from his travels, during which he encountered several individuals who fashioned themselves as "vampire hunters", who afforded him with many observations on the undead. The information is occasionally contradictory, but it will provide you with a starting point."

"And you will help us?" Courfeyrac asked eagerly.

"No more than I have already done in giving you this information," Guérande told him. "And do not implore me for more. When the stories started circulating about these latest attacks – heavily censored, mind you, but I spoke to some people with first hand knowledge of the state of the victims – I recognised the signs. I went to the Morgue to assure myself that it was so. But I am determined to remain at arm's length from what is happening. When you read the notes, you will understand why. I have a family. Let young men fight this battle."

"The police?"

"Might believe me. If I were very fortunate. But then, what would happen to your friend? I'll let you have the first turn at solving this and wish you all success in saving him. But if you fail, then this package goes anonymously to the office of the Prefect for him to make of what he will."

"Why are you really helping us?" Courfeyrac challenged. Guérande shrugged.

"As I said, I know your friend. I have heard him speak and read some of his articles. I am a Republican, Citizen. I may not participate in secret societies and I did not take to the streets last year to fight, but I would contribute in my own way. And I respect those who, like your Enjolras, have the courage to take stronger steps towards securing the liberty of the press."

"You have been generous to us, but would it not be better to join us in exterminating this monster?"

"Why should you should think there is only one, or that it is as simple as running a sword though a wild animal? Read the manuscript, Courfeyrac. They are not always solitary hunters. And their methods are not always crude. Do you know what happened to Polidori?" he asked, rising from his seat and putting on his hat. Courfeyrac shook his head. "He died in London in 1821. The coroner gave a verdict of death by natural causes. The evidence, however, was that he had taken prussic acid. Suicide or…" he shrugged. "I'm going home to my family. I wish you luck."

Courfeyrac took a knife to the strings and eagerly opened the parcel. It was not thick, perhaps twenty pages in all plus pages pulled from a publication. The latter were a French translation, but the rest – he groaned. English. He picked out a few words and phrases, then sighed, giving it up as a bad job. He needed someone more fluent.

"Ah well – at least Pontmercy is predictable in his movements." Sometimes it was of benefit to have dreamy friends who embraced a routine. He rubbed his temples, hoping he was up to the job of impressing the urgency of the matter on the translator without telling him why. It could sometimes be a little difficult to pierce Pontmercy's preoccupation with whatever was going on in his head.

It still seemed hardly possible. The meeting, the note, the very idea of his friend being hunted by a revenant in modern Paris. Had it been Jehan or Bahorel, he might have almost suspected a practical joke cooked up in concert with Borel and the rest of his crowd, an elabourate prank justfied as a means to shock a complacent bourgeoisie out of its malaise. But he had seen the blisters with his own eyes, and seen Enjolras show a terror that could not be simulated.

He thought briefly of returning to see Combeferre, but decided to collate his evidence first – Combeferre was a reasonable man, not even disposed to dismiss the existence of ghosts on data available to him, but he was exhausted and fearful for their chief's health of mind as well as of his body. With Joly to support Combeferre and Prouvaire to assist, it was Courfeyrac's role to follow up on the manuscript. Building a case was one of his singular talents.

His eye caught a word of the text as he rewrapped the papers. "Infection."

More than one creature, Guérande had hinted. And Gaudreau had spoken of a party of them. The relief Courfeyrac had been feeling at the possibility of a solution to Enjolras' ailment was replaced by trepdition.

The Undead. And if Enjolras was really infected…was it even possible to cure him? Guérande seemed to think it might be so, but…

He was on his feet and out of the café with alacrity, leaving his coffee and pastry half finished. Someone had to break through the inertia forced on them by their situation, seeing as Enjolras – usually the man to do precisely that - was decidedly in no position to take action himself.


	9. Chapter 9 False Dawn

A/N: With thanks to TheHighestPie for her Beta work, and to the members of Abaissé for providing continued inspiration. I've been caught up with bits and bobs lately, but have completed this and the next chapter. I'm projecting 3 - 4 more chapters, but given how I write that could translate to more. 

**Chapter 9 – False Dawn**

_These vampires were corpses, who went out of their graves at night to suck the blood of the living, either at their throats or stomachs, after which they returned to their cemeteries. The persons so sucked waned, grew pale, and fell into consumption; while the sucking corpses grew fat, got rosy, and enjoyed an excellent appetite. It was in Poland, Hungary, Silesia, Moravia, Austria, and Lorraine, that the dead made this good cheer._

Voltaire _Dictionnaire philosophique_ 1764

* * *

"Are you making progress?" Courfeyrac asked, not for the first time, leaning over Pontmercy's shoulder. Fortunately Pontmercy, involved in flipping between his English dictionaries and the text he worked with, was too engaged in the project to object. This time, at least, he did more than answer with a monosyllable.

"This is the strangest thing," he commented, brushing his lips with the tip of his quill and frowning over his notes. "I can't be sure, but this line seems to be about using garlic to deter…dead that return? Living dead?"

"Can you render it as 'vampire'?"

"I could, but it's not quite right – English also uses 'vampire', and the word appears throughout the text. Vampire or revenant is the idea, though. He's confusing – he uses English, what I think is Italian and some local dialects and a smattering of Latin. It's an odd work…there seem to be classifications and distinctions in types of revenant. Some are all but human…man-like? Like living beings? That's the sense of it. Dead, and yet not dead. And others are monstrous. I think here, in this specific case, he means they are physically repulsive, but he uses "monstrous" to describe them all in a general sense. They are monsters. Even the ones who are beautiful in the flesh."

"Could it be said that there are traits they all hold in common?"

"Oh, yes!" Pontmercy said, putting his pen down and turning to face Courfeyrac, who regretted distracting him in his impatience for answers. "They all live by consuming the life essence of the living, usually by drinking blood. And they act as a contagion, infecting others." He frowned. "Although there's no one method prescribed for dealing with the infection."

Courfeyrac reproached himself for this line of questioning – he did not want to draw Pontmercy's attention to the urgency of translating this particular part of the manuscript, in case he started asking too many questions in return. The advocate was already scratching his black curls and pursing his lips.

"I still think it terribly strange that Enjolras is so interested in all of this," he commented. "I should think it rather out of his way."

"Ah, that's right…you haven't really heard one of his more elaborate allegorical speeches, have you?" Courfeyrac said lightly. "I think he's planning on using this material to illustrate the threat of foreign intervention in the Republic, and is making use of the idea of the revenants to stand in for spies and informers. He also has some colourful ideas on representing the Assembly, and commentary on Metternich promises to be inspired. He'll marry the vampires of folklore with the classical Striges in a perfect Walpurgis Night of energy and abstract thought." Pontmercy nodded his head, barely comprehending. "You should come and hear him deliver it when it's done," Courfeyrac added cheekily, knowing quite well he was on safe ground, as his friend's avoidance of Enjolras and his political gatherings since their early acquaintance was well known in their circles.

"Ye-e-e-s," Pontmercy drew out. "Sounds like quite an obscure stew of ideas to me."

It had been hard enough to persuade him to do a favour for Enjolras. Courfeyrac had completely forgotten about the Bonaparte incident until Pontmercy had brought it up, but it evidently still rankled for Marius. No use in saying that Enjolras had probably forgotten about it as well. It had taken a touch on Pontmercy's inflated sense of honour – a delicately shaded hint that it would be a return favour to himself, Courfeyrac – to persuade him to translate the work as a matter of urgency. Courfeyrac had also offered payment so Pontmercy could turn it down and thus feel doubly virtuous, hopefully prompting him to finish the translation quickly.

"It is matter of some importance," he hinted again. Pontmercy smiled.

"Well, in that case, you can assist me by translating the passages rendered in Latin."

He really was a good sort of fellow, Courfeyrac thought. No wonder Enjolras insisted on seeing potential there that was not necessarily evident even to Combeferre.

* * *

Combeferre measured the dose. His hand had been shaking earlier when he'd eaten a hasty meal, splashing some of the soup the concierge had brought him into his lap, but as he dropped the drug into the water he did not tremble. He watched the droplets disperse and cloud the liquid, an effect that always reminded him of the louche effect of adding water to absinthe and the transformation of the bright green liquid into something cloudy, which was appropriate for what both substances did to the mind of the drinker.

Hopefully he would not need to use the drug, but he intended to have it to hand, just in case. He had allowed Enjolras to surface from the heavy dose given hours earlier, and felt somewhat unnerved by how quickly Enjolras had struggled his way back to consciousness. The medication should have kept him under for much longer. Perhaps the batch of the drug was not of the correct strength? Before giving him anything more, he would see if the hours he had slept had had helped restore any lucidity. Had the delusions not begun before he began administering the opiates, he would have suspected they were the cause of his friend's hallucinations and paranoia.

"Enjolras? Are you awake?" he asked gently. He was rewarded with open blue eyes, though the befogging drug's influence could be read in their lack of focus. Or was that dilation part of the illness?

"Yes," came the response in a harsh whisper. "Night is coming on, isn't it?"

Combeferre looked to the shuttered window automatically, although as tightly closed as it was he could not see any light from outside. "It must be. Do you remember anything of this morning?"

Enjolras shook his head, looking tired and bewildered. Save for a slight ruddiness to the back of his neck and touches of it on his nose and chin, there was no trace of the flaming red blisters of the morning. "It eases with the night," he said to Combeferre. "I see things more clearly. I know when he is near…it is like a burning brand in my mind. But I do not think he will come tonight…my thoughts seem clearer, somehow."

_He sounds almost matter of fact,_ Combeferre noticed with a sinking heart._ As if he spoke of something that I am completely cogent of, that we talk the same language._

"Enjolras…you do know that you are ill, don't you?"

Enjolras closed his eyes and clenched the hands that lay on the bedspread. At first Combeferre thought that he was trying to curb an angry response, but then he realised that his friend was focusing all his effort in order to speak firmly. The words came clearly and precisely.

"I am not mad, Combeferre. If you were, in this moment, to ask me to name the chief members of every cell from Les _Société des Amis du Peuple to the Mutualists and to our friends of Croix-Rousse in Lyon,_ I could do it. I could argue legal precedents from the _Discours de la Méthode._ I could recite our oaths."

"Can you tell me about the dark shadow that is stalking you?"

"Not that test…any measure but that."

"This is an illness, my friend…and I do not know if it is organic in origin or…"

"I am sane, Combeferre!" His eyes opened in misery, and looked anything but sane – they were wild, dark and anguished. It was a twisted perversion of the expression Enjolras wore when he saw beyond the material and into that other world, that other plane, one that seemed so real and immediate to him that when he spoke of it you could see it as well. Enjolras could make it seem as real as this world…more real, even, than those everyday people, objects and events that he considered avatars. Now, that transcendent vision had locked on something else, and it was evil. "I cannot see the light any more. When I look for it, there is only the surrounding darkness, and the darkness hungers."

I was wrong to push him, thought Combeferre. His momentary appearance of sanity was an illusion. There is madness in him.

Had there always been madness latent in him? Or had he only just crossed a boundary that should not have been penetrated, plunging into the dark? Jehan was wont to insist that the imaginative world was not a state, it was human existence itself. What if that reality became warped? Enjolras' face had always been turned towards the light, and that light infused him. But if his gaze had become diverted to the dark, then might it not equally permeate him? Like crystal, did he reflect and magnify illumination, or did he invert images?

"Enjolras, I need you to drink this…it will calm you."

Enjolras might have been gazing with horror on whatever terrible visions had taken the place of his idealistic dreams, but he knew well enough what it was that Combeferre offered him.

"No."

"Please. You need to sleep."

"If reason sleeps, then the monsters come."

"But you see them when you are awake."

Enjolras seemed to put in a supreme effort to imitate a rational man. "You're quite right, Combeferre, but I'm sure I can sleep naturally. I do not need the drug."

"Enjolras, you're a terrible liar at any time. Dissembling is not natural to you." He forced a smile. "Please. Trust me. Drink this."

"I'm drowning."

"I would never hurt you. Trust me, as I trust you."

"Oh God…do not ask this of me. I would rather die than…what they desire…what _he _wants…"

Silently, reacting not at all to the disjointed murmuring, Combeferre held the glass to his friend's lips and supported his head. For a moment he thought Enjolras would refuse, but with a sigh he began to drink. When he had finished he said nothing, merely regarded Combeferre with all the inherent sadness in his eyes to the fore.

"My friend, I will not leave your side. And I promise you – we will find out what is happening to you. I will exert every effort in restoring you to health."

"And if you cannot, then you must fulfil a duty that will be terrible to you, but as necessary as the upheaval we work towards." Enjolras' voice had regained a measure of its harsh, hymn-like cadence. "I must ask you to swear something to me, a vow as solemn as any of our Republican oaths."

"If it something that I can in conscience promise to do, then I will perform anything you ask of me."

"If I cannot be free of this curse, you must destroy me."

A shock of cold fear ran through Combeferre. "It would never come to that!" he protested. "This is an illness, and an illness can be cured."

"Promise me this!" Enjolras continued, earnest, fiercely intense and terrible. "And make the others swear it too."

"You are seeing things darkly now because your mind is fevered and disordered –"

He broke off. Enjolras' expression was as implacable as he had ever seen it. He did not use words, but rather the intensity of his gaze to compel. The frightening thing to Combeferre was that, in spite of the illness, the drug and the madness, in this one moment Enjolras seemed utterly clearheaded and emphatic. _God help me if I'm lying to a sick man, but…_

"I promise, Enjolras."

Enjolras nodded, barely perceptibly, and his eyes slid closed.

Combeferre took his now accustomed seat beside the bed and sat in thought, half his attention focused on listening to the stentorian tones of his friend's breathing as it slowed, and the rest trying absently to calculate how many days he had been here, how many hours. Time was beginning to assume a distorted quality foreign to his well ordered mind. And Courfeyrac? How much time had he spent here? Where was he now? Prouvaire said he had left in a hurry, but for what cause? That odd message? Combeferre could almost envy Courfeyrac. No matter how wild the chase, it gave him an outlet for his energy, which had to be better than the waiting, the sense of watching a friend slipping away.

That he might lose any of his friends was something he was prepared for, or so he had thought. Last July he had watched Enjolras in cold calculation kill at least two men with impersonal detachment. It was only when the firing had finished, when they had left their position to advance on the Hôtel de Ville as the Guard units turned with the tide of the fight, that Enjolras had spared a look for the fallen men. Combeferre never asked about the twist that had come over his features, an expression that might have been grief or something else.

Worse, he knew, for Enjolras had been the orders he had given. A gap in the barricade, a section undefended, and their leader –holding a besieged position himself that the opposing forces had identified as the source of the directed fire against them - had ordered his nearest man to fill it. Prouvaire.

Jehan had thrown himself in to stop the breach with his own body, showing no more hesitation than Enjolras had in ordering him to it, and Combeferre didn't know which had frightened him more. He crawled forward on his hands and knees to take up a position beside the poet, the youngest of their party, hating Enjolras' orders even as he had to acknowledge their necessity, and to acknowledge that Prouvaire had made his own decisions both in being there and in obedience to their leader

Enjolras would have thrown himself, or any of them, into that gap in the barricade. Only as a final measure, but one that they recognised as a possibility. Like imprisonment in Saint-Michel, exile or even a fatal malady contracted in some pox-ridden slum.

But this was something else. Neither the result of battle nor sickness, but some unidentifiable combination of both. And it was a mystery that was taking his dearest friend.

_Am I already letting him go_? He looked at his friend's hand on the counterpane, lifeless fingers entwined with his own. _The ABC might go on, but how could I leave him behind?_

Someone was hammering at the door. It certainly wouldn't be Joly, and even Bahorel would have more sense. Courfeyrac.

He opened the door to his friend, who bounded past him and into Enjolras's bedroom.

"Is he alright?"

"There's been no change – what are you doing, Courfeyrac?" Courfeyrac was at the bedside, had flung down the pile of papers he had in his hands to the floor, and – of all things – was drawing Enjolras' lips up to expose his teeth.

"Combeferre! Have his teeth here – these ones – always been this sharp?"

"Those are canines, and yes! Everyone has pointed canines." Courfeyrac touched his own dubiously, and Combeferre drew up his lip with his forefinger to show his in turn. "There? Satisfied? Now tell me what on earth you're playing at, bursting into a sickroom like this."

He hadn't been drinking – there wasn't a whiff of alcohol to him – but Courfeyrac was clearly very excited. "It's all true – all of it! I have proof!" He swooped to pick up the papers. "I told you it was vampires! Nosferatu! Strigoli! The Undead!" He thrust them at Combeferre.

"Let us have this conversation in the other room…"

"No!" Courfeyrac insisted emphatically. "He must not be left alone for a moment – not for a single second. And we need all the Amis. Oh – and garlic."

Combeferre wondered if the lack of sleep and the anxiety had made him lightheaded. Or perhaps he had fallen asleep and was merely dreaming that Courfeyrac was dancing around the room raving of monsters. Courfeyrac finally seemed sensible of the impression he was making, brought up sharply to himself by Combeferre's expression, and made the effort to settle. He was usually at his best in a crisis.

"You must read these papers. It all fits together, Combeferre." Combeferre was shaking his head, so Courfeyrac began again, relating his meeting with Guérande. As he spoke, Combeferre began making the connections, flipping through the papers where the dreadful words stood out sharply in the black ink of Pontmercy's scrawl.

_Plague of monsters. _

_Exsanguination. _

_Lingering death of the victims. _

_Mesmerism. _

Enjolras's strange behavior that night at the Comédie-Française...the man Bossuet and Bahorel met...oh, God, the neck wound and the anemia…the blisters…

Enjolras' fear.

_He was trying to tell us. And I drugged him into oblivion. _

Combeferre instinctively gravitated protectively towards Enjolras, who had not moved during the entire exchange, but lay cold and pale and stricken. It was all true. And if were true –

Enjolras, had their position been reversed, would have been calm. Define the obstacle, and then attack it. One must understand the disease, be it an organic condition or a social malaise.

"Where is Joly?" Courfeyrac asked.

"He's picking up some supplies – he should be back soon. And then we need to decide a course of action. Let me read this. Can you fetch me some writing materials? Bring me Enjolras' portable writing desk. And we need light in this room."

Combeferre wanted to be prepared to immediately conduct a new examination of their friend, in whatever light these notes could shed on what was happening by the time Joly returned.

Reading and writing swiftly, with some exchanges back and forward with Courfeyrac assisting, Combeferre quickly distilled the notes down to their salient points. Polidori's mind and approach were not as scientific as could have been hoped but there were some pertinent facts to be discerned through the opacity of the English Romantic's fascination with the Gothicism of the tales. Chief among the marks of vampiric infection was the damage to a vein or artery and the anaemia. Enjolras' confusion, the illusory madness, was more difficult to place. Victims under the mesmeric influence of the undead seemed weak, but usually knew little to nothing of their attackers. The violent rejection – the ravings that half-hinted at the source of the injury – found no echo in Polidori's text.

There were enough points of similarity, though, that Combeferre was able to undertake the not inconsiderable task of convincing Joly when he returned. Courfeyrac watched anxiously as the two murmured back and forth, re-examining the patient from the little they now knew. Combeferre's professional composure was visibly shaken only once, when they took note of the fading bruises on his friend's upper torso.

"I think we may take it now that these are the marks of restraint –" he broke off abruptly.

"We weren't to know," Joly said calmly, squeezing his friend's arm slightly. "I can still hardly credit any of it, but we must go where the evidence leads us." Combeferre nodded and they returned to cataloguing the physical symptoms.

Courfeyrac could hardly restrain his joy when Bahorel called in, bringing an update from Feuilly. Bahorel brought with him a solid confidence, not just through his physicality, but through his sheer practical knowledge and an experience of life that exceeded their own. To Courfeyrac's surprise, he received the explanation of Enjolras' condition with complete calmness.

"You forget – my family hails from the Cévannes. A little hamlet on the floor of a valley, ringed by the forest. When the wind howls down from the mountains you could believe in almost any ravening evil, and I grew up with these stories. Besides, I've been hearing tales of something that stalks and kills in the Paris streets for weeks now. And have had Grantaire battering my ears with long rambling stories of corpses drained of blood."

"So what now?" Joly asked. "What can we do tonight?"

"Not much chance of getting through to the ABC and...I'd hesitate to send off anyone alone."

"I certainly wouldn't care to venture down a dark street after reading that manuscript!" Courfeyrac agreed.

"We'll hole up here for the night," Bahorel said. "Combeferre, you and Courfeyrac need sleep. Do you know where Enjolras keeps his munitions?"

"I'll get his fowling piece," Combeferre said quietly, going into the annexe.

"Would a gun be effective?" Courfeyrac asked. "If these creatures really are dead – and I really can't believe I'm uttering those words – would a bullet make much of a difference?"

"From the tales I remember, a bullet fired at the walking dead will leave a mark, and seems to drive them off. That's how it usually goes in folklore – they identify the revenant when they locate the body by the wound inflicted by a gun or some other weapon. Decapitation would be better. Or burning. But we need to find where the afflicted corpses are interred."

Combeferre returned with the gun, and handed it with powder and bullets to Bahorel, who began loading.

"Remind me to get Enjolras a better piece than this," Bahorel commented. "He could really afford something more suitable."

Courfeyrac brought in an extra two chairs so all four could be seated, as Combeferre evidently had no intention of sleeping just yet. He returned to his notes, conferring quietly with Joly. Courfeyrac extracted a pack of cards from his pocket. "Enjolras doesn't have a card table, but shall we see if we can balance these on our knees?" he asked Bahorel.

Sometime after midnight, Courfeyrac raised his head. "Did you hear that?"

Combeferre, on the verge of dozing, shook his head.

"A scratching at the pane-"

Bahorel cocked his head for a moment as they listened intently, then – picking up the loaded gun from his lap - moved quietly to the widow. He drew the curtains abruptly and threw open the blinds. A moment's pause and he cautiously surveyed the street, staring long off to his left, motionlessly scrutinising something. They held their breath before he turned back to the room.

"Nothing there-" the slightest hesitation, then he shook his head. "Nothing. I thought for a moment I saw movement at the end of the street, but it was either my imagination or some late night passerby."

"Our nerves are overstrained," Combeferre said. "Courfeyrac, I suggest you get some sleep. Go into the other room and lie down."

Courfeyrac nodded wearily and moved out. Sleep did not come easily, though, as every noise in the street started him awake, and he had the uneasy feeling that if he went to the window to look out, something he dared not think of might be looking in. Towards two o'clock in the small hours of the morning – the Wolf Hour, as he had once heard his old nurse call it - he heard Enjolras cry out in nightmares. He clutched the pillow to himself and closed his eyes tightly as the reassuring voices of his friends came from the other room, and finally fell asleep waiting in desperation for the dawn.

Although they agreed that there was little danger of the vampires themselves being abroad in daylight, Bahorel pointed out that they did not know whether the creatures might act through any human agents, and had appointed himself to watch over Enjolras during the day while the others put together what sources they could. They would meet that evening to decide what strategy to adopt.

A matter of some discussion had been what to tell Enjolras, should he become conscious enough to question them. Waking to find Bahorel sitting in the corner of the room with a volume of English poetry he was slowly translating in one hand and a loaded weapon close to the other might require some explanation, as the practical Joly pointed out.

"He should sleep –" Combeferre said uncertainly. "That seems to be the pattern – it is with the evening that he becomes restless." Resolutely, he refused to dwell on the implications of this in light of what they now knew. "I'll be back well before evening, in any case, but I'll leave you the necessary materials to…to dose him, if he becomes agitated." Bahorel nodded firmly, to all appearances more resigned to the possible necessity than Combeferre himself. "I don't want to do that, but I don't know how else we are to restrain him...unless we do so physically."

"Send back Bossuet to me, in case I need someone to help me or act as a runner to get word to you," he suggested. "He's hasn't darkened the door of the Bibliothèque in years, and would probably wind up spilling ink all over the manuscripts or setting fire to the rare books by some form of spontaneous combustion were he to enter the proximity of anything actually irreplaceable."

Combeferre agreed, giving his friend a final glance over before he left. Knowing the cause of that hectic colouring, that harsh breathing, had the unexpected effect of making him reluctant to touch his deeply slumbering friend. Steeling himself to it, he took one of the thin wrists in his hand and counted out the sluggish beats. Refusing to allow himself to wonder if that strong heart was by infinitesimal degrees slowing to stillness, he checked the neck wound. The mark of the creature that attacked him, stigmata of evil. Even rebinding it could not cover his revulsion, as he knew that beneath the padding and cloth he tied around the neck – awkward, given the location of the wound – the spiritual contamination might be as virulent as any infection.

But this was still Enjolras – his friend. The words he had spoken the night before were some indication of the struggle being fought beneath that deceptively placid countenance, that beautiful, chilling mask touched with the unnatural colouring of the living death that stole about him and threatened to consume him. Combeferre bent over and kissed him on the forehead. "Stay with us," he murmured. "Don't go into the dark."


	10. Chapter 10 Into the Night

A/N - Thanks to TheHighestPie for her beta reading (and general comments!) and Frédérique for some very helpful historical suggestions.

The historical sources on vampire lore referred to in this chapter, with the exception of the Lovecraftian _Necronomicon _and _De Vermis Mysteriis, _are all actual texts. Vampires were a bit of a hot topic for debate among academics and theologians in the 17th and 18th century...no wonder Rousseau used them for an illustrative argument.

**Chapter 10 – Into the Night**

"…_und die Toten reiten schnell."_ ("…and the Dead ride fast.")

Gottfried August Bürger _Lenore_ 1773

* * *

Courfeyrac must have been at his most persuasive, for by the time Combeferre arrived at the Musain's back room not only had he and Joly assembled Bossuet, Feuilly, Grantaire and Prouvaire, he had all but persuaded them of his absolute earnestness, and had shown them the manuscripts. Despite the early hour, there was a bottle of brandy open on the table. The only one with no glass before him was Grantaire, who looked up at Combeferre with an intensely questioning expression when he walked in. Combeferre had seen Grantaire sober before – though his voluble behaviour when drinking tended to overshadow the bouts of sobriety – but was surprised to see him there. He nodded a greeting to his friends and drew Courfeyrac aside.

"Why Grantaire?" he whispered.

"You know he's the best classicist among us – his languages are probably better even than Prouvaire's," Courfeyrac said, slightly evasively. "He hasn't touched a drop this morning," he added, anticipating the next question.

"He's a gadfly. Do you really trust him to do this?"

"For Enjolras, yes. He's already guessed much of what has happened – didn't bat an eyelid at the news that the undead are stalking the streets of Paris, unlike Bossuet who was ready to have me committed to a _maison de santé_ before Joly confirmed the story. Besides, we need him."

Combeferre shook his head, as much as to say that the matter was in Courfeyrac's hands, and turned to the others. Grantaire's expression told him that he had guessed the subject of their quick consultation, and Combeferre responded to his curled lip with a quick nod in his direction. He read something like relief there before the cynic lowered his head, gazing down at his folded arms.

"It's true, isn't it, Combeferre," Prouvaire said, a statement. This was not a matter for jesting. "How is he this morning?"

"Sleeping. No real change – although he slept better last night, and the nightmares and sleeplessness have abated somewhat, and he only woke once. He's not strong enough yet for us to tell him what we know."

"But we will do that tonight?" Feuilly asked. "I do not feel comfortable keeping anything from him – particularly not something of this nature."

"Perhaps it is best we do not," Prouvaire suggested softly. "I can't imagine anything more likely to drive him to madness than the idea that that he is being enveloped by an evil that is his very antithesis."

"If his sanity isn't beyond saving already," Bossuet said glumly.

"That will never happen" Grantaire said heavily. He had been silent, aware he was involved under sufferance, but the suggestion was too much for him. "If the entire world plunged headlong into madness and the dark, he'd be the last one over the precipice."

"Can we delay this discussion until tonight?" Combeferre intervened. "We need to know what we're confronting. Unfortunately, Dr Polidori might have been a physician by training, but he seemed more interested in the folkloric and dramatic possibilities of the vampire tales than he did in the physical mechanisms of how the process worked – and how to undo it. He offers several possibilities for killing the monsters, and seems to suggest that this will free those victims not yet dead. But we need to know more."

"I can go to the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève," Prouvaire volunteered. "Feuilly – you'll join me?" Feuilly nodded – the Bibliothèque was open to both students and non-students.

"I'll go too," Joly said. "I've been doing some work in the stacks there lately on some herbal texts and know it well."

"Good. Take what notes you can – anything that might connect to this case, no matter how outré. We don't know precisely what we're looking for, and anything that tells us what they are as well as how to locate and kill them might be of assistance. Courfeyrac and I will take the Bibliothèque de la Sorbonne, while Bossuet can assist Bahorel."

"You're still enrolled, aren't you, Grantaire? You can come with us," Courfeyrac added.

"As Aristaeus consults the naiads when his bees die," Grantaire started in gravelly amusement "and the Spartans turn to the Pythia in Apollo's temple at Delphi, so does Combeferre take to the bibliothèque when the vampires -" he broke off more readily than usual at the sharp nudge that Courfeyrac gave him with Joly's cane, sobriety having left him more attuned to the cues from his friends than was his wont.

They took up their hats and departed, Feuilly, Joly and Prouvaire taking the back stairs to the rue des Grès, a short round the corner walk to the Sainte-Geneviève. The others walked in the direction of the rue Saint-Jacques.

* * *

The Bibliothèque was located inside in several adjoining halls on the fourth floor of the northern and eastern wing of the Sorbonne. Courfeyrac and, even more unusually, Grantaire lowered their voices to a murmur appropriate to a temple of learning – and far more respectful than that which they usually adopted while crowding into their lecture halls on those days when attendance was a necessary evil. The combination of sombre tomes and the dimensions of the rooms commanded awe, thought Courfeyrac. Despite the seriousness of their errand, he had to smile a little at Combeferre's ease as he was greeted by the attendants, who did not look particularly surprised when the medical student gave a sketchy outline of the sort of texts they wished to peruse. It was probably no more obscure than any other area Combeferre's pan-discipline approach took him, although the subject matter was more in Prouvaire's range of interest.

Courfeyrac would have preferred to attach himself to Combeferre as they researched, but knew that his usually phlegmatic friend could become impatient of distractions when he was single-mindedly pursuing a subject. Combeferre was tenacious when on the scent of knowledge, and thoroughly relished tracing all the threads of a line of research through their sometimes winding paths, exploring tangents and applying his personal mix of philosophy and science. It made one feel quite the fifth wheel if one couldn't keep up.

Instead, as the staff began their helpful attendance on Combeferre and consulted with him over volumes and manuscripts, the law student found himself working alongside Grantaire. Their irascible friend showed a surprising adeptness at manoeuvring his way through the cataloguing system, flitting effortlessly from Greek to Latin, from medieval to baroque texts and back to classical sources. There was something intriguing in how his mind worked. Whereas Combeferre would plumb an idea to the bottom and investigate all its applications and implications, Grantaire - even while sober – made leaps and connections and skated on the surface, a dabbler in all fields. With the best will in the world, and a keen focus on helping Enjolras, he still struggled with distraction and the bright flashes of learning.

"Listen to this!" Grantaire whispered to Courfeyrac, looking up from a bound set of papers. "_Dissertatio Historica-Philosophica de Masticatione Mortuorum_!" he read the title gleefully. Courfeyrac looked at him blankly.

"The _what_ dead?" he asked.

"_Historical and Philosophical Dissertation on the Chewing Dead,_" Grantaire responded with relish. "Written by a Philip Rohr in 1679 – clearly a man with a good eye for a sensational title. I think you should borrow his phrasing for your next paper."

"We're not here for our entertainment, Grantaire" Courfeyrac reprimanded, although he had to admit that the dissertation sounded terribly tempting on the title alone. That was a problem he encountered with researching case law – there were too many diversions to be found leading into the bizarre and utterly irrelevant byways of litigation once one began delving into it. Even if must be admitted that animated corpses did not usually constitute the subject matter.

"It is perfectly relevant!" Grantaire defended himself. "Rohr believes that vampires are merely corpses possessed by demons in their coffins, and that they chew inadvertently."

"Well, I don't know if Enjolras is the victim of a chewing corpse, but copy it down anyway."

"What is a vampire but a chewing – or biting – corpse?" Grantaire demanded, but dutifully returned to his notes. Courfeyrac felt justified an hour later when he found Michael Ranft's 1728 _De Masticatione Mortuorum in Tumulis Liber._

"_Book of the Chewing Dead in Their Tombs_!_" _He said triumphantly. "Ranft refutes Rohr utterly, and demonstrates that the idea of demon possession is absolutely ridiculous – that demons are incapable of possessing the walking dead. And he obviously has the more sensational flare for phraseology."

"So what does he say the walking dead are, then, if not demonically possessed?" Grantaire asked. Courfeyrac shrugged.

"Vampires are entities separate from demons – they do what they do without the benefit of possession. Or so I gather from Ranft. It might be useful-" he began taking notes.

Combeferre, in spite of the assistance of the staff with whom he was on familiar and friendly terms, was frustrated in his attempts to find a volume he'd found referenced several times. The _Necronomicon_, a 17th century translation of Abd-al-Hazred's _Kitab al-Azif_, appeared in the catalogue, but seemed mysteriously unlocatable. "It might have disappeared during the Revolution," a helpful attendant suggested. "As you know, many texts were dispersed or even destroyed during that period."

"But we do have the next title on your list," said his colleague, coming up at that point with a large quarto sized volume. "It's a later copy of Ludwig Prinn's _De Vermis Mysteriis _– one of our restricted titles. We wouldn't normally allow access to it, but you are an exception, M. Combeferre." Combeferre smiled gratefully and took the book to the reading tables. He could thereafter be seen shaking his head in disbelief more than once.

"Time we moved on," Combeferre said above his shoulder as Courfeyrac looked up guiltily from a long digression into the more gruesome details of the Elizabeth Bathory case. Combeferre's hair was standing up in spikes from where his fingers had worked through it as he wrote – it must have been a thoroughly productive day for him, judging from the state of his coiffure. "How did Grantaire go?"

Courfeyrac looked at Grantaire's pile of notes. "Surprisingly well – except for a side expedition into eighteenth-century Germanic ballads that yielded little in the way of useful information but produced a colorful cast of characters. I think we can expect his monologuing to take on a decidedly Teutonic aspect in the near future. Otherwise, it's been years since I've seen him so focused – he's still off perusing the stacks."

"Let's see if the others have fared as well."

"This," said Prouvaire to the gathering in the back room of the Musain, "is quite a mixed bag." Combeferre nodded. He was feeling less than comfortable in his role as de facto leader of the Amis. It was not the first time he had filled this place – he had often convened meetings during Enjolras' absences. Enjolras was not a leader to determine his followers' actions in minute detail, and among his chief lieutenants he allowed wide latitude in the execution of what tasks they undertook, encouraging initiative and tightening the reins only on matters of security and specific requirements that needed to be filled. Combeferre, Courfeyrac or Feuilly – each could be trusted to provide the general direction that was required.

But his presence, even when silent, was always felt – not often through any censure of word or expression, but through example. Knowing his faith in them as individuals unified to a single cause inspired them. He celebrated their unique strengths and talents, working towards the one purpose. Enjolras himself would have stepped aside had someone else more fitted to the task of leadership arrived in their circle. He consulted each on the area of their talents, he deferred to Courfeyrac in the matter of recruitment and Combeferre in scientific progress. He encouraged each in the role for which they were best fitted.

Those qualities of leadership Combeferre felt at ease with. But the hard, implacable edge, should it be called for – it was that which he dreaded. In time, perhaps. And through necessity. But he did not want to be put to this test, not now. He was relieved that the Amis had fallen back not only upon his guidance, but also their own self-discipline.

"Let us get down to it, then. How did you fare at Sainte-Geneviève?"

They reverted to the tones they used when reporting on the mood in the National Guard units or the ateliers, or how they might reel off lists of potential sources of powder.

"The literature is conflicting," Prouvaire said, drawing on his reading of theological material. "_Dissertatio physica de cadaveribus sanguisugis_ by Johann Stock and _Dissertatio de Vampiris Serviensibus_ by Johann Zopft, both written a century ago, state scientifically that vampires are dreams inspired by the devil."

"But Dom Calmet argues in his _Treatise on the appearance of Angels, Spirits, Demons, and the Returned in Body and Vampires_ that the debate in the German universities wais wrong in reaching a negative conclusion on their existence," Feuilly continued. "He pointed to accounts from Eastern Europe, and called for more study of the subject."

"Then there's the Palve case of the 1730s-" Joly added eagerly.

"Yes, we encountered that too," Courfeyrac interrupted. "There seems to have been a substantial amount of discussion among German and Italian academics about it. Did you find Pitton de Tournefort's _Voyage into the Levant? _His account of the ramshackle doings surrounding the destruction of a _vrykolakas _on Mykonos would make a fine subject for a comedy…"

"We're not interested in amusing anecdotes, Courfeyrac. Stay with the topic. We need practical information – not only Enjolras' life may depend on it," Combeferre said, fixing his friend with a stern eye.

"In 1693, a Polish priest asked the Sorbonne to counsel him on how he should deal with corpses identified as vampires," Feuilly said quietly. "And the same year,_ Mercure Galant_ printed reports of vampires in Poland."

"Any recommendations on how to dispose of them?"

"You have heard of how the peasants in a darker time dealt with convicted and hanged criminals and supposed witches? Burning and staking them through the heart, or removing the heart entirely, interring remains at a crossroads or unhallowed ground, seems to be a theme."

"That we should turn to superstition!" Joly said, shaking his head.

"Perhaps, Joly. But there might be something in it – look at your magnets. Would not the force of magnetism appear strange to a completely unlettered man? Magic. We call these creatures supernatural, but might they merely be currently unexplained by what we know of natural law?"

"True. So these physical means of addressing creatures suffering an unknown disease would be akin to using a herbal treatment, the active property of which we do not properly understand yet?"

"Precisely. In this case, I would prefer to know the origin of the disease – I'm inclined towards the organic, but cannot rule out supernatural agents. In either case, we must treat the contagion without knowing how the agency of treatment works."

"Groping our way forward in the dark." Joly responded.

"Perhaps one day we shall understand it better – but time is not on our side, and we must act now."

"Continuing –" Grantaire interrupted impatiently. "The _Lettres Juives_ includes several Hungarian cases. You recall the supposed origins of our mysterious stranger?"

The discussion continued until nightfall, when Combeferre adjourned the meeting. "Tomorrow we return here to discuss what next." He massaged his temples. "How to locate these creatures would seem an obvious first step."

"We could use Enjolras as bait –" Courfeyrac suggested.

"I hope you jest. Will you come with me, Joly, so we can relieve Bahorel for a few hours tonight? We need to determine how to divide our forces so Enjolras isn't left alone."

"I'll come with you as well" Courfeyrac said. "I had a few hours sleep last night, at least. More than you two."

"You nap as a cat does. Very well then – let's get there before it grows too dark. Enjolras might be waking."

Combeferre had not quite known what to expect on their return, but when Bossuet opened the door to them he was somewhat surprised to find Enjolras sitting up in bed, apparently quite composed, as Bahorel read to him and took notes, balancing the portable writing desk on his knees. Enjolras held up his hand to indicate that they were almost done, as Bahorel read the last lines.

"....Article 6 – Commissions will be established for: 1 – provisioning, 2 – armament, 3 – supplying of ammunition. Citizens capable of fulfilling these functions are asked to present themselves to the Hotel de Ville.

Article 7 – Armorers shall deliver firearms, powder and bullets found in their stores to the people. The state will reimburse them for the price of these objects with a 25% bonus for the risks involved."

Bahorel in the role of secretary was not one on which Courfeyrac would normally pass up the opportunity of remarking upon, but Combeferre was in the room first, greeting his friends. "Courfeyrac, why don't you take Bahorel and Bossuet into the other room while I have a word with Enjolras here?" He exchanged a look with Courfeyrac that the latter understood. He was to brief their friends on what progress had been made. As Bahorel laid the desk aside, Combeferre picked up the notes.

"Blanqui's proclamation?" he asked quietly. "I didn't realise you were working with him, after our last discussion on his more extreme viewpoints. As I recall, you had fallen out over those remarks on eliminating what he calls the 'social cancer' of the privileged classes."

Enjolras nodded. Combeferre carefully noted the shaky control – his friend's eyes were still bloodshot and there was a tremor in his hands. Still, it was considerably better than expected.

"We have made a tentative rapprochement – we will have need to work together in future. I saw him last –" Enjolras hesitated, clearly confused about the passage of time. "The other week. He asked me to look over the proclamation in view of what we've learned from last July. We do not see eye to eye on all things, as you know. I still think him far too preoccupied with exterminating what he is pleased to call the 'aristocracy of money' and with defining those aristocrats as external to our Republic and therefore bereft of her protection. He does not see the universal fraternity of humanity as we do. But on the methodology of combat and as an organiser, he has interesting ideas. It is as well to be prepared when the time comes again. Bahorel has been good enough to take notes. I –"

He glanced down at his shaking hand. Combeferre put a hand on his shoulder.

"How are you this evening?"

"Better. It is as if the veil over my sight is beginning to lift. I feel as if the dim shapes that are around me are beginning to coalesce and take form. There is a face I can almost see..."

His breathing was becoming disordered.

Combeferre did not want to press him, but needed to know. "Enjolras, do you know what is happening to you? Do you remember anything of the night you were attacked?"

"It's almost there, but – something glimpsed out of the corner of my eye. Like the smaller stars of the Pleiades, I seem to see it only when I do not look at it directly."

Enjolras' eyes, still uncannily dilated, looked at him – a dark ring of blue around a centre of deep black. It was not entirely the frank and candid gaze of his friend. Something foreign lurked in that dark gaze.

"You've learned something, haven't you?" he continued, his eyes flicking towards the door, beyond which the others were quietly talking as Courfeyrac briefed them. "You know something of what is happening to me."

Combeferre couldn't make out distinct words, but he had a feeling Enjolras was listening. To their friends, or to something else? The impact of all he had read during the day suddenly came to him and he realised that Enjolras – the man he had trusted with his life in the past and would do so again – was not himself, and that something warred with his true nature. Even as his friend seemed to come back to himself, there was no certainty that this was true lucidity. It might be the clarity of returning health...or it might be the last assertion of his dying soul, as he had seen a moment of awareness come to those on their deathbed before the final death rattle and expiration.

"I think we are on the track of a cure," he said, hoping his voice conveyed more assurance than he felt. "We are all of us working together." And here he smiled. "You'd be pleased with us, Enjolras – again, when the crisis is upon us, we work as one."

To his surprise, Enjolras smiled in return. He had not seen that look in far too long, it seemed. It was merely a shadow of the radiant confidence that permeated his friend's expression when truly engaged with his subject, and nothing like that slow, rare, transcendent smile that sometimes illuminated his friend's features. But even this gesture gave him heart.

"Fraternity." He breathed, and grasped Combeferre's hand. "To stand beside such men as you..." he could not complete the thought, but held Combeferre's gaze with his own.

"Let us talk in the morning," Combeferre said. He felt uneasy discussing the cause of his friend's illness with him in the dark hours, when shadows gathered around. He felt them pressing even beyond the closed shutters.

"Perhaps now-"

"No, his hold on you is less in the daylight –" He stopped abruptly, realising what he had let slip. Enjolras looked at him, fully comprehending.

"You are right," he said.

"I'll help you with your notes, if you like." Combeferre volunteered. He was exhausted, and Enjolras looked hardly better, whether or not he had slept during the day. But work was a remedy, and planning for the coming dawn would help keep the malevolent darkness at bay.

"I would appreciate it. As long as you can allow Blanqui the ground for the sake of discussion, even if you think him a little too appreciative of Hébert**'**s methodology."

"At least when you're possessed of Saint-Just's spirit, you eschew his more broad definitions of who is an enemy of the people and how to dispose of them."

"Come – if you throw Saint-Just's sins at me, I shall have to return with Danton's cruder epigrams about requirements for establishing the Republic."

Combeferre managed a chuckle. "Save that for Courfeyrac – he'd be able to instruct you with more skill on how to engage in such banter." It was a laboured exchange, but it was heartening to see Enjolras putting such effort into a semblance of normality. "I'll just step out for a moment and speak to Bahorel and Bossuet before they leave." He carefully left the door widely ajar.

* * *

Enjolras farewelled Bahorel and Bossuet while Combeferre lingered in the other room, discussing something with Courfeyrac and Joly. He wasn't sure if he heard or merely understood the sense of the words, but he knew that they were speaking of the things that writhed in the dark.

He was just now beginning to wonder about the number of his friends who had frequented his rooms these last few days – or what he supposed were days. It seemed only that there had been periods when he had felt tired and frail, almost dizzy with exhaustion, and then the other times he both sought to recall and dreaded remembering, where terrible eyes leered and talons reached for him.

He kept his eye on the rectangle of the door, and Combeferre not far beyond, his attention on Joly's words but still so comfortingly close. His friends were tying him to this world, but the dénouement was coming. The veil was lifting, and soon he knew he would face the creature from his nightmares and know his features in waking life. And he was afraid. For his friends, and for himself.

As he watched, the door began to close, so slowly he could not be sure at first if it even moved.

Even with his heightened hearing, he did not hear it click as it shut. He felt a breeze at his back, and his breath caught in his throat as he turned to the now-open window.

There, beside his bed, was the face from his nightmares, in sudden startling clarity. Every feature he could not recall in the waking world – the unearthly pallor, the silver eyes and high arch of the brows, and the mouth wide and cruel in a snarl of razor canines was poised immediately above him.

"Orssich." he whispered, everything rushing in on him at once. The theatre, the alley, the nightly incursions by this incubus.

There was no time to move, to speak or even to gasp before the creature was upon him.

As they spoke, Joly and Courfeyrac debating the comparative merits of ash and hawthorn for use in making stakes, Combeferre looked up and realised that the door to Enjolras' room was closed. He felt a prickling up his spine, but there was no sound from the room beyond. While Courfeyrac and Joly conversed, he rose and opened the door.

Combeferre took in the gruesome tableau at the window in a moment. The creature, a dark, slim figure, gave him a look of unutterable malevolence, all the more terrifying because of the triumph that could be read there on features that were so human and yet so unearthly.

The student felt a wave of revulsion. All that he had read that day – the arguments over whether these monsters were demonically possessed corpses, reanimated bodies, a tangible ghost or the avatar of some shambling, unnamable horror from beyond the stars – shrivelled before the reality of the Thing that stood before him.

So very nearly human. So completely alien. Its eyes shone silver, like a wild animal caught in the momentary illumination of a passing carriage light. Enjolras was slumped over one of the intruder's arms with his hair obscuring his face, and Combeferre could not tell if he was conscious. He was as limp as if lifeless, and a vivid patch of red soaked through his nightshirt at the neck where his bandage was in disarray, his legs loosely askew where they touched the floor, his weight entirely and effortlessly supported by his captor.

"Courfeyrac! Joly!" Combeferre cried, but even as the young man sprang towards his captive friend the creature slipped out the window, carrying his prey – Combeferre had a vague impression that he hardly touched the sill, seeming to melt out into the darkness beyond. It took only moments to reach the other side of the room, and his friends, bursting through the door, were directly behind him, but it was too late. Both fiend and man were gone. They peered down into the street, Combeferre sickened by the possibility that Enjolras might have been hurled to the paving stones below.

Leaning out over the edge of the sill with Courfeyrac and Joly at his elbows, Combeferre felt a lurching sense of disbelief. The dark intruder seemed to have landed on his feet, and in the gloom of the street the dim pallor of the white nightshirt could be seen where he carried their sick friend in his arms. In spite what he had just seen, it seemed incredible that any being in human form could have such strength. But this monstrous entity had not only managed to drag a man from his bed, he had leaped with him a full story down into the street below.

Two shadows detached themselves from near the wall, taking shape as men next to the intruder, and one turned a white face up to their window. Combeferre thought he could make out a blood red smile on the man's face, and felt a disorientating lurch of disbelief as the vampire's bright hair and beautiful, androgynous features seemed a distorted parody of those of the friend who had just been stolen from them. The sound of cantering hoof beats clamoured on the stones accompanied by chinking harness muffled by cloth.

"He has Enjolras!" Courfeyrac hissed next to him, quite unnecessarily, but Combeferre did not have time to answer before he was elbowed aside so Courfeyrac could swing his legs over the sill until he was sitting on it.

"Courfeyrac, you can't – you'll…!" But Joly was too late, as Courfeyrac awkwardly twisted around onto his belly, then slid down until only his hands still had a grip on the edge.

It all happened at once – Courfeyrac lowering himself as far as he could before letting go and dropping to the street below, and the carriage that charged up alongside the group below the window. Combeferre saw Courfeyrac land – somehow – on his feet (_he really is like a cat_, came the fleeting thought), stagger, then all in one quick move turn to the interlopers. Quite what he thought he was going to do against the three vampires Combeferre could not imagine, but the question was irrelevant. The carriage door opened, and he caught a final glint of gold hair in the dim side lamp on the otherwise darkened coach before Enjolras was passed into the compartment, his abductors followed him in a blur of swift motion, the door closing behind them with an emphatic finality.

The coachman, a muffled figure in a tricorn hat, whipped up the black horses again, and the carriage lurched away. Courfeyrac did not hesitate, his friends watching in astonishment as he ran pell mell after the disappearing vehicle, coat tails flying out behind him.

"Well," said Joly, sounding dazed. "That was….does Courfeyrac imagine he can outrun a four-in-hand?"

"Come on," said Combeferre grimly, "we'd better go after him in case they turn again in their tracks and come back for him as well."

He would give no voice to the despair he felt.


	11. Chapter 11 The Maw of the Monster

a/n I had nearly decided to abandon this as I'm not too proud of these early efforts at characterisation, but because people mention and review it from time to time and request a conclusion, I've decided to plough ahead, finish it, and then try to revise it all (particularly earlier chapters). Thanks to everyone who has been nudging me to finish it – I've been having the usual crisis of confidence (and have been caught up in non-fiction publishing connected with my research field), so it took an awful lot of coddling and kindness to persuade me to write anything. I'll try to post updates more regularly, and the chapters may be shorter to encourage that.

* * *

_**After all these dreams there remained on waking a remembrance of having been in a place very nearly dark, and of having spoken to people whom I could not see; and especially of one clear voice, of a female's, very deep, that spoke as if at a distance, slowly, and producing always the same sensation of indescribable solemnity and fear. Sometimes there came a sensation as if a hand was drawn softly along my cheek and neck. Sometimes it was as if warm lips kissed me, and longer and longer and more lovingly as they reached my throat, but there the caress fixed itself. My heart beat faster, my breathing rose and fell rapidly and full drawn; a sobbing, that rose into a sense of strangulation, supervened, and turned into a dreadful convulsion, in which my senses left me and I became unconscious.**_

_Carmilla,_ Sheridan Le Fanu, 1872

It was hardly that Courfeyrac didn't know that what they did was serious…very serious indeed. He'd had friends whose lives had been made extremely difficult indeed over a careless word, a failure to explain what they were doing in a particular street at a particular time, or who had been unable to give reasons for the wording on a scrap of paper in their pocket. And if he, fleeing over the Paris rooftops after a police charge, dropping down a skylight with a debonair tip of the hat to the alarmed occupants and a request for directions to the front door, took some pleasure in the more theatrical aspects of what they did, it didn't mean he took matters any less seriously. But sincerity did not preclude joy, and it could sometimes be an asset…as even Combeferre had conceded when they'd been stopped by a gendarme and Courfeyrac had managed to convince him that the scribbled writing in his notebook said "recharge" rather than "revólver", and that the notes referred to the perfumes he had promised his mistress.

Now, trying to keep his legs under him as he ran, hoping not to slip on the paving stones where they were worn smooth by passing traffic and slick with moisture, he felt none of the joy, that effervescent sense of élan that made his seditious activities so enjoyable. This was cold fear, as he despaired of gaining on the coach which moved like a nightmarish hallucination before him. It seemed to flicker in and out of his vision, more than it should have given the lights that shone from rooms and streetlights, and it moved with a speed that should not be possible in the narrowness of the passage. It was a carriage that had ridden out of a dream, and which lured him on into the dark, elusive and changeable.

This was his final chance. He pumped his arms hard, regretting the fashionably high and tight armholes that made his coat feel so restrictive across the shoulders, feeling even his cravat was choking and his waistcoat too tight. But he must push himself, must press on, even if he felt he could not draw grasping breath. Because that nightmarish coach was his last link to Enjolras, and if it vanished altogether, then Enjolras was gone too.

It slowed to turn, and soon it would be lost further in the winding medieval streets – but at least it did slow, and Courfeyrac could assume it was heading north towards the river. He pushed himself to one final supreme effort, felt something give way in his jacket as he burst some seam or other, and pushed his legs to one last burst, pushing air through clenched jaws.

And then his legs gave way. It was a sudden and complete, his feet slipping in horse manure and his footing completely gone. There was no hope of recovery – he seemed to feel suspended a moment in air before slamming down on his hip and side with a jarring crash that knocked what little air there was out of his lungs. He rolled over on to his hands and knees, looking after where the coach had vanished.

And he grinned fiercely.

"He does not think –"

"I know."

"He means well, but it is not enough to mean well. He has to think through consequences. When a ship sails into an uncharted harbour one has to take soundings. And we are sailing in much unchartered waters indeed – rashness and imprudence are our worst foes…"

"I'm worried too, Combeferre."

"I'm saying all this aloud, aren't I?" Combeferre ceased surveying the streets around them and looked at his friend. "I wish I had Enjolras' gift of silence, but sometimes I must state these things or they niggle at my thoughts and rattle around my head. I –"

"You don't need to explain," Joly said soothingly. Combeferre's distress was more than understandable, given his two dearest friends had just vanished, one taken and one racing into the dark. "We'll find him. We'll find both of them."

The words were meaningless, but what was to be said? Joly wanted to rattle on himself – to speak and say something comforting and safe and, well, _anything_, anything to hold against the memory of that dreadful fiend, that abomination, and the thought that there had been a nest of them, active agents of malice that knew of their existence and were working against them. It was the very deliberateness of their actions he found so chilling. They were not mindless creatures, but possessed of a plotting, malignant, bestial intelligence that had singled out one of their own.

And now he must say anything to stop thinking of Musichetta and whether she was safe, and whether Bossuet had made it home or whether he was still out abroad in a night that harboured such monsters so very close to them.

"I know it's a subject for jest among us, but Courfeyrac really does have a genius for landing on his feet. He'll be fine –"

"And if he is?" Combeferre said, so softly he was almost inaudible. "Even if he returns to us, what then? Enjolras is gone. He might be dead even as we speak. Or transfigured beyond hope or help."

"One foot in front of another," Joly comforted…then clenched Combeferre's arm tightly. "Even if our gait is as stumbling as Courfeyrac's over there."

Sure enough, with dirt staining his light coloured trousers and a limping stride, there was Courfeyrac, hobbling up to meet them, grinning lopsidedly and waving. Combeferre gave full vent to his relief in a vehement scolding.

"You are ten different kinds of a fool, de Courfeyrac! It's a damned good thing that Enjolras isn't here, because he'd have nothing good to say about such monumental stupidity. I can only assume that those demons aren't collecting foolish rakes as well…"

"Peace!" Courfeyrac held up a hand, still smiling. "Don't befuddle me – I need to remember it, I need to keep something in my head…quick, let's start walking back to Enjolras' apartments, I must write this down." He turned grabbed his friends' arms and turned them around to go back in the direction from which they came, closing his eyes as he walked and holding on to them. "This! Remember this exactly…motto: _Vive ut vivas._ Coronet with alternating acanthus leaves and groups of three pearls in trefoil…that means a marquis, I think, not a duke…although who uses the title of marquis anymore? How very unfashionable. Must be newly minted…only they would be so vulgar…helm between affronty and profile; main tincture argent; secondary gules; charges, three barbeaux…mantle of acanthus leaves…"

"Heraldry?" Combeferre queried. "What does…"

"Don't interrupt! I'll forget!" Courfeyrac always did better when he was able to see things and fix them in his mind.

"The carriage!" Joly blurted. "It had must have had a coat of arms!"

"Coronet of a marquise…helm between affrontry and profile…."

It was a distant chance. Who knew what sort of decoy the carriage had been festooned with, or what mock-up of a heraldic shield had been emblazoned on it. The nobility had once ferociously protected their titles and privileges, but the Empire and Restoration had rendered many formerly solid practices rather rackety. Still, it was all they had – and it was hope. Slender and elusive though it was, it was their own real link to Enjolras and the vampires who had him.

"…acanthus leaves…"

Combeferre carefully noted every word.

* * *

Feuilly separated from the others after leaving the Musain, heading back towards his rooms, turning the information they had gleaned that day over in his mind and even as he was paying attention to his surroundings. He always did this, as a man who was obviously distracted made himself a target. If one walked with shoulders back and met the gaze of others directly, it helped shift those with predatory intent towards other targets. Tonight, after what he had read, he was more than ever aware of the things that crawled out when one turned over their shelters or ventured too close to their lairs. The rot around him was deeper than he had imagined, and extended beyond the redeemable. Light was needed to drive out these creatures, just as he and his friends sought to generate light in its other forms to drive out the social malaise that mired men in the dangerous and desperate classes.

His conversations with Prouvaire that day had turned his mind in esoteric directions – as conversations with Prouvaire were wont to do. One moment the poet had been musing on their foes as the symbolic nadir of the evils to be swept away by the Revolutionary deluge, the next he was trying to determine if the weight of evidence suggested ash or oak as the most effective wood to use in weapons to destroy them, and precisely what measurement of silver was most efficacious in killing them.

One point had stood out in Prouvaire's wanderings into the more abstract realm of ideas. Why, he asked, had Enjolras been the victim of choice? "Chance," Feuilly had argued, but Prouvaire was not so certain. Were these beings the expression of the dark that hungered, in both a metaphoric and very literal sense, for the light?

"The imagery of light and dark is overused," he had said. "But that is because it is of a power we cannot deny. Why take only that which is already touched with decay and despair? If you were a vampire –"

"Not an occupation I've ever considered adopting," Feuilly said dryly.

"_If_ you were a vampire," Prouvaire persisted, "Would you confine yourself to the existing only on the very extremities of society, taking that which would least be missed, scrambling among the abased for your sustenance? If you lived forever, wouldn't you rather taste something rarer once in a while? We crave what we most lack. And what sort of temptation would a prize that embodied absolute conviction and walked upright in the sun, the harbinger of a dawn to banish their darkness, represent?"

"You alarm me," Feuilly said quietly. "I do not like to think that this is personally directed at Enjolras."

"But there's more. These actions have repercussions, even for monsters. Why do they not rule us, if they wield such power? There must be limitations on them, as the texts suggest. They have great powers, but moments of acute vulnerability. Their weaknesses are our strengths – we move in the light, we fashion the weapons with our science and intellect that obliterate them. So, being vulnerable, they have still exposed themselves by striking at Enjolras. There must be a commensurate reaction."

"You think they will go underground?"

"I think one of two possibilities is in play. Either this is a cycle and they will need to conceal themselves soon, either by fleeing or going more deeply underground. Or they are growing in power and boldness, and anticipate a time when they will be so strong, they will not need to fear us in any way. Either thought fills me with dread."

Feuilly did not like to entertain these possibilities either, threatening as they did either a time in which vampires imposed a new and more terrible aristocracy upon them all, or when they reverted completely to the shadows and escaped justice to strike again at a future time.

But there was comfort in Prouvaire's words as well. These creatures were vulnerable. So – ash, oak and silver. He knew where to source the woods he needed…and, thanks to a gift Enjolras had given him long before, he knew where and how he could source the silver as well.

* * *

He was pale, dishevelled and wounded when they brought him in, bled almost white. Marfa flickered down the halls, intrigued and excited by this departure from routine. Someone new. Someone younger than her. Someone to stir the routines and patterns and create eddies and flows to change and alter their interactions. If he lived.

Looking down between the arches of the first floor gallery to the entrance below, highlighted in the pool of light from the solitary lit chandelier, a low, snarling conversation was taking place between Ambrus and Oscar. She could hear perfectly well Oscar's hissing words and Ambrus' snarling replies, while the boy hung raggedly and bleeding between them, head thrown back to expose the long, bloodied pillar of his neck.

"But you did not tell me!" Oscar said petulantly, his words wanting only an accompanying stamp of the foot to complete the illusion of a spoiled child. He ripped off his cape with one hand, careless of the fastenings, and threw it behind himself. "Look at him! He is my mirror image-"

"Oh, I'd say his hair is more flaxen, and his nose more Grecian" Irma said smilingly as she entered behind the two and broke in on the argument in progress. "Transformed, he may well be much the handsomer." She slid to Ambrus' side and, grasping Enjolras' head by the hair, pulled it up to more closely examine his features, running one long white finger down the length of his nose, like a flirtatious young girl with her beau. Irma must be in one of her more playful moods, Marfa decided. Sometimes she tired of arbitrating between her clan members and preferred instead to sow her own trouble. In this, she succeeded – Oscar did not stamp his food, but he did clench his hands into fists and make a short, sharp movement to close the gap between himself and Ambrus' prey. Irma, mischief done, stepped away.

"Not a step more." Ambrus' words came from between bared teeth and with rumble of forcefulness to them. Although accompanied by no other dramatic gesture, Oscar obediently recoiled, chastised by the stronger being. "You will not touch him. You will not enter his room and you will not interfere with him. He is not for taking. And if you cross me in this, I will rend you into pieces."

Oscar would probably have turned and stormed out, but in many ways his will was still fundamentally enslaved to that of Ambrus, his master. He nodded once, reluctantly, and then removed himself.

As he slunk away, Moréno entered, moving aside to accommodate his passing. "They have prepared the room," he told Ambrus.

Ambrus took his leave, and as he strode up the wide staircase, Marfa laughed as they passed – one tall and dark, the other white and clasped to his chest, a pale and pallid thing in his night robes. The two lovers or even a nuptial couple that they parodied entertained her immensely.

Her gaze caught that of Moreno's, looking up to where she stood. One rarely knew quite what he was thinking – he seemed to draw thoughts to him where they vanished like darkness down a well – and the meaning of his expression eluded her now. Unaccountably, in a rare gesture, she shuddered and turned away.


End file.
